China shuts down political website, arrests founder

A message on the website 6-4tianwang.com confirmed the police actions. "Because the site posted a lot of internal news that upset the leaders, it was closed down by the Chengdu Public Security Bureau on March 31," the site said. "We strongly condemn the Chengdu authorities making a political persecution against Tianwang’s office and against Huang Qi."

Huang, 36, launched the website last June to help people find missing relatives and friends. The website claims to have helped 10,000 people find their loved ones. Its popularity even generated coverage by the official People’s Daily and the People’s Public Security Paper.

But the site caught the attention of the government when it began publishing essays about corruption and human rights violations. The elaborately designed and sophisticated website also dared to broach the sensitive topic of the June 4, 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Ten days before the June 4 anniversary, the website issued several dozen news items about the incident, including a demand by a bereaved mother, Ding Zilin, for the trial of China’s legislative head Li Peng, who is widely seen as the culprit behind the massacre. The site also published an article titled: "June 4th is a political scheme carefully plotted by the Chinese Communist Party’s conservative faction."

On June 3, a dozen police officers went to Huang’s office and took him and his wife Zeng Li away for questioning, after they searched their office and home and took away notebooks, pictures and computers, the information center said. Zeng was released on Tuesday, but Huang was formally arrested.

The website also reported stories about corruption and the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, including an item about a Falun Gong member who died after being force-fed while in police custody. Frank Lu, director of the information center, said the case was the first in which a website creator in China had been arrested. Previously, people had been arrested for posting politically sensitive essays on overseas sites and for passing lists of Chinese email addresses to overseas human rights groups, Lu said.

Huang’s site continued to be accessible on the mainland Tuesday because Huang posted the content on an internet service provider (ISP) based in the United States, even though his site is registered in China. "The police can’t block people from accessing the site because they need his password to connect to the overseas ISP," Lu said. "Many people are now getting around the government controls this way."

But the content on the site has not been updated. A Chengdu police official contacted by AFP declined to comment. Internet usage in China has skyrocketed, with the number of surfers soaring from 2 million last year to more than 10 million this year, according to recent official statistics. Huang’s case is the latest indication that China intends to tightly monitor the internet for fear it would grow out of the government’s control.