Chinese authorities may have blocked access to a number of online services following a massive pro-democracy protest held in Hong Kong City this week.
Reuters reports that journalists who flew to China to cover the protest were unable to access Line and KakaoTalk, two messaging apps respectively owned by Naver Corp. of South Korea and Japan's Kakao Corp. The reporters also said that they and other users were unable to access Yahoo's photo-sharing site Flickr and Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service.
Line spokesperson Fumiko Hayashi confirmed the downtime, saying users from China are unable to log in to their Line accounts. On the other hand, Kakao said in a statement that Chinese users can still send texts on Kakao Talk but not access other services, such as adding new friends and using certain emoticons. Microsoft has declined to comment, but Yahoo said it is aware of the issue and is currently investigating why Chinese users cannot access Flickr.
"We cannot say for sure with 100 percent confidence as to what is causing this problem," says a Kakao representative in a statement. "We can only assume."
However, a China-based anti-censorship organization believes the restriction of messaging, photo-sharing and cloud storage services in China was prompted by a pro-democracy protest held in Hong Kong Wednesday, the day the services became unavailable.
"This is not a technical malfunction," says GreatFire.org co-founder who goes by the pseudonym Charlie Smith to prevent reprisals from the government. "I imagine these latest blocks are attributable to the Hong Kong demonstrations."
More than half a million people gathered in the enclave's central business district Wednesday and marched around the city to call for full democracy when the government revamps its election process for 2017. On the same day, the State Council of China, which has granted the city full autonomy in 1997, stated in its official mouthpiece The People's Daily that Hong Kong's autonomy "has always had clear boundaries and standards, namely that Hong Kong should be mainly governed by Hong Kongers who love their country."
Smith says the Chinese government has begun intensifying its campaign against online services and content it deems critical of the ruling Communist Party in May, during the run-up to the 25th anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square protest.
China already blocks websites that can potentially provide its citizens access to information the government has no control over, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and provides intermittent access to other services. Last month, China banned several Google services, including its search engine, Gmail and advertising services. Reports have also said that Dropbox has also been banned.
