All typepad.com and blogs.com hosted sites are banned in China starting this morning, a week after China has agreed to amend its constitution to respect human rights. This is another move by the Central government to curb free speech and freedom of information on the Internet. This is the first time in two years that China has blocked access to foreign servers that host personal sites. (Correction SECOND time in two years as the last event was in Jan 2003)
Last week saw two hosting services within China, blogbus and blogscn banned. After shutting down forums and message boards within the country, it’s now using blocking software to stop information from leaking into the county via personal sites, an increasingly vibrant China internet community, and a place where users are slipping in banned information. Some sites in the blogging community are turning black in protest of this event while others are reporting the incident. So far sites in Hong Kong, US, Canada, and the Netherlands has done so.
81% of all cyber dissidents in the world are held in China: 59 out of 72 logged by Reporters Without Borders compared to 38 out of 48 in November 2003.
[filed by Yan Sham-Shackleton]
9:35:12 AM 
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