China has blocked access to the New York Times website, the newspaper said Saturday, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.
Computer users who logged on in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou received a message that the site was not available when they tried to connect on Friday morning, the paper said. Some users were cut of as early as Thursday evening, it said.
The website remained inaccessible from Beijing Saturday.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said they do not deal with websites. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates the Internet, could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao defended China’s right to censor websites that have material deemed illegal by the government, saying that other countries regulate their Internet usage too.
Read the rest from the Associated Press:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/worl
d/2008-12-20-china-newyorktimes_N.htm?csp=34
Peace and Freedom Global Future 