Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Open Internet Access Demanded During Beijing Olympics
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has told the organisers of the Beijing Olympics that China will have to lift their notoriously strict internet firewall during the event. The IOC addressed this issue during one of their final official meetings with the Olympic hosts before the Games start this summer. Richard Kevan Gosper, vice-chairman of the IOC, explained that the country was obliged under its Olympic contract to provide journalists with full access to the web. He said: “Our concern is that the press is able to operate as it has at previous Games during Games time.”
30,000 journalists are expected to descend on China during the Olympic Games, and Mr Kevan Gosper has told the host country that failing to offer visiting press open access to the web would “reflect very poorly” on the country.
Recent unrest relating to Tibet in China has caused the country to impose even tighter Internet regulations than usual, but Mr Kevan Gosper believes that these will be eased during the Olympics. He said: “There was some criticism that the internet closed down during events relating to Tibet in previous weeks, but this is not Games time.”
China is renowned for routinely blocking access to certain internet sites and it often implements a blacklist of banned words that cannot be found online; entering them in a search engine will cause it to crash. However, the country has already shown some signs of easing their internet controls; just a few days ago, the country lifted a block on the BBC website that had been in place for a number of years. Despite this, access to Wikipedia remains blocked, reportedly because of its numerous mentions to sensitive issues such as the Dalai Lama, Tibet and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Source:
BBC
The Times
This article is the intellectual property of Pan European Consulting Limited and any unauthorised reprinting or publishing on other websites is an infringement of copyright.