The moves added to China's long-standing efforts to control online speech
By Owen Fletcher and Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service
07/06/2009
China appeared to block Twitter across the country and Internet access in a western province on Monday, after ethnic riots killed at least 140 people in the remote region.
The moves were an apparent bid to stanch the flow of information out of Xinjiang province and to prevent further rioting there. Over 800 other people were injured and the official death toll is likely to rise, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
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The government actions added to long-standing efforts to control online discussion of sensitive topics, especially at times of crisis.
"They cut off the Internet to shut down communications," said Wu'er Kaixi, an ethnic Uighur who fled China after helping lead pro-democracy protests there twenty years ago. The Uighurs are a minority concentrated in Xinjiang province that China has struggled to assimilate.
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