A Hong Kong Internet service provider said on Thursday that it blocked access to a pro-democracy website to comply with the city’s national security law.
In a statement sent by email on Thursday, the Hong Kong Broadband Network said it had disabled access to HKChronicles, a website that compiled information about “yellow” stores that supported the city’s pro-democracy movement and released personal information and photos of police and pro-Beijing supporters during anti-government protests in 2019.
“We have disabled access to the site in compliance with the National Security Law requirement,” said the company.
USA UNITED BY AUSTRALIA, UNITED KINGDOM AND CANADA IN HONG KONG MASS ARRESTS CRITICISM
The site’s chief editor, Naomi Chan, said in a post last week that Hong Kong users reported the site as inaccessible. She accused telecommunications companies like SmarTone, China Mobile Hong Kong, PCCW and Hong Kong Broadband Network of blocking it.
China Mobile Hong Kong and SmarTone did not immediately comment. A PCCW spokesman said he did not comment on the matter.
Chan advised Hong Kong residents to “make the first preparations to contain the blockade of the Internet on a larger scale and face the darkness before dawn.”
The action to block HKChronicles has heightened concerns that Beijing is asserting more control over the city and breaking its promise to allow the former British colony to maintain separate civil rights and political systems for 50 years after the 1997 Communist continent took over.
It also heightened fears of Internet restrictions in Hong Kong, similar to the “Great Firewall of China”, an Internet censorship system on the continent that blocks foreign search engines and social media platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter and removes words key elements considered sensitive by the Chinese government.
Glacier Kwong, a digital rights and political activist based in Germany, wrote in a post on Twitter last week that Hong Kong “has abused legal procedures and other means to prevent the free flow of information online” in the past 18 months.
“The Hong Kong government is stifling the freedom of Hong Kong people on the Internet,” she said. “An open Internet has always been the cornerstone of freedom in one place. Interrupting Internet freedom also undermines the flow of information, freedom of communication and freedom of the press.”
Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong last June aimed at cracking down on dissidents in semi-autonomous territory after mass peaceful demonstrations against a now withdrawn extradition project turned into months of anti-government protests that led to sometimes violent clashes.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
The security law criminalizes acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers to intervene in city affairs.
According to Article 43 of the national security law, the police have the authority to order that “a person who has posted information or the relevant service provider erases the information or provides assistance”