Politics

CHINA: Government blocks religious websites

In what is believed to be the largest survey to date of how far the Chinese government's Golden Shield internet firewall denies access to religious websites, Forum 18 News Service has established that while Chinese internet users do have access to a range of websites based outside the country that cover religious themes in Chinese or other languages, certain religious sites appear to be consistently blocked because the Chinese government does not like their content. Victims of automatic barring are sites that cover the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, the Falun Gong spiritual movement, sites about the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang, sites run by the Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement, sites in Chinese detailing persecution of religious communities in China and a perhaps surprising number of Catholic sites. Posted by Editor at July 22, 2004 05:24 AM