Chinese Authorities Shut Down Twitter
Written by DJ Special Blend from Chicago on June 3, 2009
Twenty years after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Chinese authorities have shut down Twitter. Apparently, they don’t want people to openly talk about the incident 20 years ago that left many Chinese citizens dead.
Suntimes.com: Authorities are trying to silence social networking sites — like Twitter — that might foster discussion of the events of June 3-4, 1989.
“The authorities are making a major crackdown to block user-generated sites such as Twitter and show there is no right to public discussion,” a University of California professor said.
Wikipedia advses that there are discrepancies in the number of deaths from this event:
The movement lasted seven weeks from Hu’s death on 15 April until tanks cleared Tiananmen Square on 4 June. In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or severely injured. The number of deaths is not known and many different estimates exist.[3][4] There were early reports of Chinese Red Cross sources giving a figure of 2,600 deaths, but the Chinese Red Cross has denied ever doing so.[4] The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.[3]
I’ve definitely met people from all over the world on Twitter alone, but nobody from China yet. And I apparently never will meet anyone from China on Twitter or any other social network site for that matter.