China adds Washington Post, Guardian to ‘Great Firewall’ blacklist
Other blocked outlets include Bloomberg, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.
China has ramped up censorship in the weeks surrounding the Tiananmen Massacre that occurred on June 4, 1989.
China just blocked articles from The Washington Post and the Guardian from appearing on the country’s internet.
The two newspapers were among the last major English news site still accessible to mainland Chinese residents, according to a report in The Post. Other blocked outlets include Bloomberg, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.
The country recently blocked pictures or keywords related to the Tiananmen Massacre on the social media site WeChat in the weeks surrounding the event’s 30th anniversary on June 4. China had previously blocked social media sites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp.
China’s robot censors worked overtime to detect and block content related to the 1989 crackdown.
The censorship move signals another shift in China’s authoritarian leadership since the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen. Thousands of residents in the semiautonomous Hong Kong gathered for a vigil on Tuesday commemorating the protest.