"EU and China Going beyond Tiananmen Square"
For the complete report from The Guardian click on this link
China blocks Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Hotmail ahead of Tiananmen anniversary - by Tania Branigan
On Tuesday Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services today , two days before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. The move came amid increasing pressure on dissidents, in a reflection of the authorities' anxiety ahead of the sensitive date. Hundreds died as the army forced its way through Beijing to clear away demonstrators from the capital's political heart in June 1989, but the issue is taboo on the mainland. The photo-sharing site Flickr, email service Hotmail and other services were also unavailable. Reuters reported that the email service Hotmail was also blocked across the mainland, while some internet users said they were unable to access Microsoft's Windows Live. Blogger.com was blocked last month and YouTube has been inaccessible from the mainland since March. Internet monitors have also shut down message boards on more than 6,000 websites affiliated with colleges and universities, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has urged China to publicly account for those killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre 20 years ago. She called on China to release all those still imprisoned in connection with the protests, to stop harassing those who took part and to begin a dialogue with the victims' families. China, as an emerging global power, "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal," she said in a statement from Washington. "China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally recognized human rights and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform,'' she added.
The Wallstreet Journal reports Europe's stance toward human-rights abuses in China has become increasingly spineless. The EU withdrew post-Tiananmen sanctions in the early 1990s. Since then commercial gain has subordinated any attempt to influence China's political modernization. The EU acquiesced in China's entry into the WTO, throwing away its biggest leverage over Beijing in return for very limited change to China's system of economic governance. China has increasingly backtracked on its WTO commitments to open its economy -- which could in turn have helped political liberalization. China has attracted increasing aid from Germany, France and the European Commission itself, which spends more than €100 million ($141 million) a year on trade-related and business projects. It even spends €1 million a year on a fruitless Human Rights Dialogue. Paris and Berlin also wish to remove the EU's arms embargo -- the last remaining post-Tiananmen-massacre sanction imposed by Europe.
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