As recently as Wednesday (30th.) foreign journalists in Beijing have been reporting that they have been unable to access Web sites for the human rights group Amnesty International, the Falun Gong spiritual movement, and the Tibetan government-in-exile. This is despite Olympic organizers previously promising foreign reporters unrestricted media access during the games, from August 8 through August 24.
Now it seems that Chinese authorities have partially given in to public pressure. Journalists working at the Games' Main Press Centre can now access sites that were blocked. They include Amnesty International and the BBC's Chinese language news homepage. However, tests indicate the sites remain blocked to people using China's "public" internet.
Click on the following links for more information on Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China and on the Golden Shield Project, also known to everyone else as the "Great Firewall of China".
But don't worry, here is a computer-generated image released by the the Beijing Public Security Bureau showing the cartoon figures of "virtual police" who will be patrolling the internet to combat online pornography and other "illicit" activity....... Cute or what?
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