As the tension in Hong Kong continues to strengthen, Chinese censors have blocked BBC website Wednesday, Oct.15, to what the British national broadcaster claims as 'deliberate censorship.'
BBC's English language website was blocked by the Chinese communist party censors effective Wednesday and as of Thursday, Oct. 16, the website remains unreachable, according to Reuters.
"The BBC strongly condemns any attempts to restrict free access to news and information and we are protesting to the Chinese authorities," stated Peter Horrocks, director of the BBC World Service Group. "This appears to be deliberate censorship."
Based on reports, the reason was unclear and what prompted Beijing to block the website. Aside from BBC, BBC's Chinese-language website, New York Times, and the newswire Bloomberg were also blocked.
On Wednesday, a Chinese official reported to foreign media that China's movement to block foreign websites can be rooted to the fact that China has been seeing intrusion of exterior forces in the current pro-democracy protests. China suggests international journalists to report 'objectively.'
Beginning October, new rulings had been issued by the Chinese court on what 'netizens' can comment, say and do in the internet. This strategy of Beijing is allegedly done to control the popular opinion.
According to BBC, its English-language website has been accessible since 2008 Beijing Olympics. However, BBC World TV experiences sporadic blackouts when covering China stories. BBC Chinese-language news has been impeded since the beginning.
In 2010, BBC was blocked for the first time by China for a couple of days apparently concurring with the awarding ceremony for Nobel Peace Prize Chinese protester Liu Xiaobo. This was followed on April 2012 when BBC's English-language was interrupted while covering activist Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest.
BBC's English-language website has been partly blocked from the last 90 days. The website was only completely blocked on Wednesday, according to Greatfire.org, China-based anti-censorship group.
