Copenhagen Post: Danish websites censored by Chinese authorities

November 14, 2002

Banned: this country's largest internet search engine, jubii.dk, and several other Danish-based websites have been hit by Chinese government censors

Daily newspaper DAGEN reported this week that several high-profile Danish websites had been subject to censorship by the Chinese government. The newspaper based its report on a survey undertaken by DAGEN at the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, which is currently sponsoring a research project called "Real Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China." According to DAGEN, the Harvard study consists of a computer, linked to a Chinese network in the province of Hubei, that searches internet sites round the clock.

Normally, the Harvard computer's results are hardly eye opening, as search results are virtually uniform no matter where in the world the test computer is networked. But search results gleaned from the Chinese network show something altogether different, seemingly confirming what experts have long suspected: that the Chinese government systematically limits its population's access to Internet websites.

Jubii.dk press and communications director Rasmus G. Kristensen told DAGEN he was surprised that the Chinese government would block the popular Danish search engine.

"We have primarily Danish content, which Chinese people can't generally read. But it's a well known fact that ignorance creates an atmosphere of fear," Kristensen told the newspaper.

According to DAGEN, the Chinese government blocks were probably provoked by the links under jubii.dk's logo, including links to Amnesty International and the controversial Falun Gong movement, which the Chinese government regards as a threat to its power structure.

Rasmus G. Kristensen told the newspaper that the search engine doesn't edit links from any interested party, as long as the content on the linked sites are legal.

A representative from this country's Amnesty International office believes there's a more sinister motive at work in China's censorship policy on Danish webpages.

"The Chinese government is incredibly paranoid about information exchange and anything else they can't directly control. Free information yields free thoughts, and they're certainly not interested in that. We regard internet censorship as an attack on the right to free speech, and thereby a violation of human rights," said Lars Normann Jorgensen, Secretary General of Amnesty International in Denmark, in an interview with DAGEN.

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