![]() ![]() This past June, the Internet was again shut down temporarily in Urumqi to stop the spread of rumors related to forced demolitions in Piqan county - 27 people were killed in riots during a violent confrontation between protestors and police surrounding the demolitions. In March 2013, protests erupted after a seven-year-old Uyghur boy was stabbed to death by a Han Chinese in Piqan county of Turpan Prefecture, leading to a three-day Internet blackout. Since then, network disruptions have happened on a smaller scale during politically sensitive periods. Amid protests in 2009, residents faced a nearly year-long Internet shutdown and were even deprived of telephone service for a week at the height of the unrest. The Xinjiang region, mainly populated by the Muslim Uyghur minority group, has faced similar challenges. Most recently, a network shutdown occurred in Diru county, following protests against a policy that required Tibetans in a local village to put Chinese national flags on their rooftops. Connection disruptions now have become a norm in conflict areas where self-immolation protests and anti-government demonstrations are frequent. A number of counties in Aba Prefecture, predominantly Tibetan, suffered a similar fate. Internet access has remained unstable in the area ever since.Īccording to Tibetan dissident writer Woeser's blog, Internet and mobile SMS connections for more than 18 counties from Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture were cut off from the global Internet for at least three months beginning in February 2009. The Internet was shutdown in March of 2008, and briefly restored in December 2008, only to be cut off again a few months later when the first self-immolation protest took place. This kind of “political punishment” began in Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures with 2008 political riots in Lhasa. In some extreme cases, network shutdowns have extended to local mobile networks. Seeking to contain unrest and discontent in conflict areas, authorities have imposed Internet shutdowns, depriving individuals of their right to communication online. Chinese authorities believe that foreign forces, such as the Tibetan Government in Exile and World Uyghur Congress are involved in the organization of separatist activities in China. Prolonged network shutdowns have become a regular occurrence in Uyghur and Tibetan minority regions of western China, as Christopher Beam describes in the New Republic article quoted above. But those living in remote, embattled ethnic minority regions of the country face a far more bleak reality when it comes to using the Internet. Stories of Internet censorship in China often focus on surveillance and social media filtering, practices that violate the rights to free expression and privacy of all users in mainland China. But the signal didn’t seem to contain any data. I stopped getting messages on WeChat and QQ, China’s most popular mobile apps…When I tried to load e-mail, an error occurred: “Could not authenticate cellular data network: PDP authentication failure.” I still had a signal-the little 3G icon was there and everything. ![]() ![]() … as we approached Aba County, something changed. Photo by Students for a Free Tibet via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) Student-led protest in Chabcha county, Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
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