Arcadia Foundation

As a reader, I’ve learnt that 20 million citizens reside in China’s western Xinjiang region. I can almost rest assured that as a blogger, I’m missing out on reaching that same 20 million, and not just because of the clear and present language barrier.

Those 20 million citizens are ‘internet refugees’; have been without uncensored links to the outside world since the government blocked nearly all online access, including text messages and international phone calls after ethnic riots in July.

China’s strategy is a winning one -to kill the voice of the people, you simply shut off the microphone, and turn down the speakers. They have done so in the largest and longest blackout in the world, observers say.

For many of the citizens, it feels like being thrown thirty years back in time. And like thirty years ago, they’ve learnt not to trust their government’s claims that change for the better is on the way.

The government this month promised that internet access would resume ‘gradually’, a statement they’ve made previously in July. So far, only four restricted web sites, half of them state-run media, have returned.

Of course, all across China, word has spread that Google postponed the launch of its new two mobile phones, citing the despute with Beijing over internet censorship and e-mail hacking.

This kind of censorship is indeed unprecedented. No country, according to the Open-Net Initiative, has shut down information so widely for so long. Some former Soviet Union nations have done so during sensitive elections, “but only for hours or days at most”, said Rafal Rohozinski, the group’s principal investigator.

“The fact that the Chinese authorities had to resort to shutting down and cutting off the entire infrastructure….is indicative of the difficulty they are having in controlling cyberspace”.

Comments