12-14-2005, 09:59 AM
Yahoo! is once again helping the Chinese government censor news of repression and human rights violations. A search on the Chinese Yahoo site reveals that all mention of the incident in which Chinese police massacred 20 demonstrators on December 6th has been removed from the search index of Yahoo China. By contrast a search on Yahoo's U.S. site returns several thousand results.
full article: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15910
Quote:Chinese authorities have imposed a news blackout after police brutally put down demonstrations in Dongzhou, a provincial village in south-eastern Guangdong province.
Reporters Without Borders has uncovered draconian measures put in place to prevent news filtering out about the 6 December incidents through the local and foreign media, as well as by censoring any message posted about it on the Internet.
Local sources said that a security perimeter of around 10 kms had been thrown around the village immediately afterwards and checkpoints set up on all roads leading to the village, effectively sealing it off.
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The rare uncensored reports reaching foreign countries were obtained by telephoning directly to residents in the village. Local media received an order to only relay reports put out by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, particularly in relation to the number of people killed during the police crackdown : three according to official sources, more than 20, villagers have told the international press.
Chinese discussion forums were ordered to censor all messages posted about the events....
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Reporters Without Borders also tried researching the word "Dongzhou" on the Chinese version of the search engine Yahoo ! (www.yahoo.com.cn), This produced no results...
full article: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15910