Annual Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China ...

<strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China (2009)April 26, 2010The Chinese government continued to control the internet through deleting postings onsensitive topics, blocking citizens’ access to websites based abroad, and closing downthose based in China. Websites that report on human rights news, such as those of CHRD,Tianwang Human Rights Center, Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch (CRLW), Canyu,and Boxun were blocked and could only be accessed in China using proxy servers.• Beijing-based activist Wang Lihong ( ), who had been investigating thesuspicious death of Shandong petitioner Li Shulian ( ) on October 3, hadmore than 20 articles deleted from her personal blog hosted on Sina.net byOctober 9. Wang reported that fellow Beijing activist Zhang Shihe ( ) andpoet Ma Fei ( ) also had blog posts about Li's case deleted from their personalblogs. 38• In November, the website of Beijing's Shouwang Church, www.shwchurch.com,was blocked by internet authorities. Not only was the house church's officialwebsite inaccessible, but search results for “Shouwang Church” ( on蕻Baidu and Google.cn returned only a handful of results, none of which wererelevant to the church. When a similar search was performed on Google.com,over 500,000 results were returned, demonstrating the degree to which王 荔information about the Shouwang Church was being李 淑 莲restricted domestically.Shouwang Church's website was shut down once before, in和 世 张April 2009. 39马 非守) 会 教 望b. National campaigns to tighten censorshipThe authorities sometimes shut down websites in large numbers during “sensitive”political periods or during nationwide campaigns to eradicate “pornographic” or “vulgar”online content. Many of the websites targeted for closure report on or provide a platformfor netizens to discuss socio-political and human rights issues. In 2009, the Chinesegovernment carried out these campaigns before and during the Two Meetings 40 in March,the 20 th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in June, and the 60 th anniversaryof the founding of the PRC in October. Officials also launched an “anti-pornography”drive near the end of the year.An activist working in the internet industry told CHRD that an estimated 100,000 ormore websites were closed down during 2009. Some of these websites managed to openagain after meeting conditions set by the authorities, such as agreeing to delete certainposts or comments from the websites. However, a few websites decided to move theirwebsites to a hosting company based abroad, at which point they were blocked andbecame inaccessible in China. Furthermore, during “sensitive” periods, websites basedabroad were especially susceptible to hacker attacks suspected of being associated withthe Chinese government.• A number of websites focused on social and political issues were closed from lateMay through the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4.Tianyiwang, 41 a website favored by academics and public intellectuals, closeddown part of its operation between May 25 and June 5 reportedly due to official15