'Great Firewall' is raised in China as anniversary of 1989 protest nears

BEIJING — There is no tweeting about Tiananmen Square, or anything else, in China this week.

In a crackdown apparently timed to the 20th anniversary Thursday of the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations, the Chinese government has pulled the plug on the social-networking site Twitter and dozens of other Internet sites and blogs.

And government monitors have shut down message boards on more than 6,000 Web sites affiliated with colleges and universities, apparently to head off any talk about the 1989 events, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Not to neglect the old-fashioned methods of censorship, pages have been strategically ripped out of foreign newspapers sold in Beijing in the past few days. Television screens in the diplomatic compound went black when the British Broadcasting Corp. was airing a report about Tiananmen Square, only to come back on when reports switched to the missing Air France jet.

"They feel this is a fragile time for China," said artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whose popular blog was shut down by authorities over the weekend.

Notwithstanding the two decades that have elapsed, the demonstrations remain one of the most sensitive subjects in China. The very mention of the date June 4 (when the People's Liberation Army moved in to crush the demonstrations) is banned in the Chinese press.

Police have been detaining writers, activists and especially former dissidents who participated in the 1989 demonstrations. Others have been put under surveillance or house arrest, barred from traveling to Hong Kong, where a demonstration marking the anniversary took place on Sunday.

Ding Zilin, whose 17-year-old son was killed in the protests and who now heads the group Tiananmen Mothers, was told to leave Beijing until the anniversary is over, according to the New York-based group Human Rights in China.

At least one former participant in the demonstrations, Wu Gaoxing, has been taken into police custody without explanation. Wu, who spent two years in prison for his role, was one of five authors of an open letter to President Hu Jintao complaining of the continued mistreatment of those who'd participated in the 1989 demonstrations.

The Chinese government appears fearful that activists will stage some kind of demonstration to commemorate June 4, as is happening in other cities around the world.

Besides Twitter, which went down Tuesday, the Chinese have blocked Hotmail's Web-based e-mail and the photo-sharing site Flickr. YouTube has been blocked here since early April.

Jeremy Goldkorn, an expert in online media in China, said he thinks the government was particularly upset that people were trading information about how to read a controversial new memoir. It was written by the late Zhao Ziyang, the former secretary-general of the Communist Party who was fired in 1989 for his opposition to a military crackdown on the demonstrations.

The Chinese government routinely raises what is nicknamed "The Great Firewall of China" at times of political sensitivity.

It has also canceled conferences and speeches around this period. A musician who was scheduled to give a radio interview Thursday about the cultural scene in Beijing said he was told it had to be canceled because of "technical difficulties."

"The host apologized and explained there is a rash of technical difficulties arising all over the country on Thursday," said the musician, who asked not to be named.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.