Websites closed after rule revision

Three popular websites have been shut down as part of a new drive to suppress internet content seen as anti-government and having the potential to incite unrest, human rights groups said yesterday.

The closure on September 30 of the Yannan forum, a discussion website popular among intellectuals and rights activists, and of two Inner Mongolian websites four days earlier came days after Beijing issued revised regulations governing potentially sensitive internet news content.

Social unrest over government corruption, land requisition policies, police brutality and civil rights issues has increasingly been aired on the internet.

The Yannan forum announced on September 30 that it had been closed for a "cleanup".

"Yannan will be undergoing a complete cleanup and rectification. Its date of reopening will be announced separately," the website said.

The site has been carrying news of and discussions on the recent high-profile conflict between villagers and authorities in Taishi village, Panyu , Guangdong. Hopes that villagers could oust village chief Chen Jinsheng , who they accuse of embezzlement, were dashed last week when Panyu authorities officially declared an end to the three-month struggle by the Taishi villagers to exercise their civil rights.

The website was also known for its in-depth analysis and discussions on social problems.

An employee confirmed the closure to US-based Radio Free Asia, but declined to comment.

Meanwhile, two Inner Mongolian websites were closed for allegedly hosting "separatist" content, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said.

Ehoron.com, a popular online discussion forum for ethnic Mongolian students, was apparently closed due to "separatist" messages critical of a mainland television cartoon that showed Genghis Khan as a mouse with a pig's snout, the reporters' organisation quoted the forum as saying.

The other site, monhgal.com, the website of a law firm, apparently was closed for encouraging its users to complain about the same cartoon. It was reopened on Monday only after it promised "not to post any more separatist-type information".

The revised rules governing online content, issued last month by the government, require internet operators to re-register news sites and police them for content that could "endanger state security" and "social order".

They target sites that publish fabricated information or pornography and forbid content that "harms national security, reveals state secrets, subverts political power [or] undermines national unity", state media said.

The regulations also ban posts that "instigate illegal gatherings, formation of associations, marches [and] demonstrations, or disturb social order".