China gags Tibetan blogs and Dalai Lama news

Indo-Asian News Service 

Kathmandu, Oct 22 (IANS) Unable to stop US President George W. Bush from meeting Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and furious at the US Congress for bestowing its highest civilian honour on the exiled Nobel laureate, China has stepped up curbs in Tibet, closing down websites and blogs in the latest offensive.

At least five Tibetans were arrested in Tibet¿s Amdo province for celebrating after the Dalai Lama received the Congressional gold medal while a popular website and two blogs were closed down.

The first to be axed was www.tibettl.com/blog  that was closed Oct 16. Soon after, www.tibetcm.com  and www.tibetcm.com/blog  suffered the same fate.

The closure of the websites comes in the wake of international media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders issuing a report, saying how repressive governments, in a bid to undermine media freedom, were turning their sights on websites and blogs.

With Beijing due to host the 2008 Olympics, China has been trying to block any reference to the Dalai Lama and Tibet that shows the people of the region do not identify with the Chinese and want to adhere to their own culture, religion and language.

China has begun a massive public relations exercise in its southern neighbour Nepal, inviting groups of Nepali journalists to Tibet so that they can write about the region¿s development and prosperity under Beijing¿s control.

Earlier this year, Reporters Without Borders had condemned the sudden disappearance on 28 July of two blogs by leading Tibetan poet Woeser (also known as Oser and, in Chinese, Wei Se). They were shut down by the websites that hosted them - Tibetcul.net, a Tibetan cultural portal, and Daqi.com, a local blog platform - presumably on government orders amid a continuing wave of online censorship in China.

"We are appalled by the closure of Woeser¿s blogs and we call for them to be reopened," the press freedom organisation had said. "As her poetry is banned in China, these blogs were the only way she had left to express herself. Their disappearance shows how the Chinese authorities go out of their way to limit Tibetan culture to folklore for tourists."

Woeser used her two blogs - http://oser.tibetcul.net/ and http://blog.daqi.com/weise/ - to post her poems and essays about Tibetan culture, as well as articles written by her husband, Wang Lixiong, an independent Chinese writer. Most of the visitors to the blogs were Tibetan students who, like Woeser, had received their education in Chinese and who wanted to renew contact with their original Tibetan culture.