China cuts internet to quell ethnic riots China has blocked internet access in parts of Urumqi - the capital of the northwestern Xinjiang province - after violent clashes between the minority Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese reportedly left 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured. "We cut Internet connection in some areas of Urumqi in order to quench the riot quickly and …
...that (like ours) the Chinese government is full of clueless tossers who blame "The Internet" for all of society's problems rather than their own stupid system.
Imagine a country with a clueful ruler. There would be no limits to what they could achieve. No-one to stand in their way as they used the awesome power of "competence" to enforce their will on the rest of humanity.
Scary! But fortunately all the historical evidence suggests such a thing could never happen.
"The internet is a key tool for the propagandists for violent extremism... Let me be clear. The internet is not a no-go area for Government....."
"We are already working closely with the communications industry ... we should also take action against those who groom vulnerable people for the purposes of violent extremism... I will be talking to industry... about how best to do this."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/home_office_smith_speech_web_terror_crackdown_insanity/
Looks like those Chinese authorities blame the transmission medium, the Internet, instead of seeing the real problem, the killing of the 2 Uighurs in Guangdong by the Chinese authorities after an otherwise peaceful protest.
Thank god we don't have extremes like that in Europe, with police killing protestors and ministers blaming the Internet. Trying to prevent the disemination of information rather than fixing the problem.
Now all we have to do is convince the Chinese authorities that the internet is bad for China as a whole and maybe they'll turn China into a massive intRAnet.
That'll bring down spam levels for the rest of the world by about 50% and will make it alot harder for pillz spammers to find bulletproof hosting for their illegal pharma sites.
I'm sorry to say it - but this is actually an excellent response by the Chinese authorities.
A year ago there was an incident where a Hui minority taxi driver hit a Han girl. The Han villagers beat up a bunch of Hui people, and then suddenly there were Hui people from around the country reading this news and rushing down to the area to try to beat up Han people. Luckily the military got there first and send all the trucks filled with angry men back to where they came from. The news was blocked by the authorities, so all the Chinese people I know didn't know about it at the time, and if it wasn't there would have been much more escalated violence.
The current violence is quite terrible. I spend much of my year in China, and there is generally much less violence there compared to UK. But people in a big angry mob are quite another issue...
If the government didn't control the internet in this particular instance, then the Xinjiang minority people living around China would be killed as information and mis-information buzzes around the country.
I would also like to point out that Chinese people don't treat the information on the internet with quite the same pinch of salt as British people do. They read things as facts much more easily, hence the fake fact of the rape leading to a bunch of Han men killing two Xinjiang minority people in Guangdong. So this means that there will be many people inventing escalating atrocities about the region that will be taken as facts from others around the country - leading to much heavier death tolls.
"A year ago there was an incident where a Hui minority taxi driver hit a Han girl. The Han villagers beat up a bunch of Hui people,"
So the Han villagers don't trust the authorities to prosecute the taxi driver and want to take matters into their own hands? And your fix is to perform a cover up?
And when the LA riots happened in the 90's it was because the video was clear as day and yet the officers were let off. Would you cover up the distribution of the video? Yet the response was to fix the problem, the officers were prosecuted and the riots stopped.
"If the government didn't control the internet in this particular instance, then the Xinjiang minority people living around China would be killed as information and mis-information buzzes around the country."
The Chinese authorities version of events on TV are not trusted. This is normal, they lie a lot and cover up a lot, hence they are not believed. The solution for them is to lie less and cover up less, then their view will be trusted more.
You say that "They read things as facts much more easily, hence the fake fact of the rape leading to a bunch of Han men killing two Xinjiang minority people in Guangdong"
As you are fully aware, Uighur's are treated badly, and the subsequent killing of 154 by the authorities is proof of that. They will now no doubt hide the bodies and try to sweep it under the carpet, but until they fix the problem it will not go away. The brawl is just a symptom of a problem and the cover up fixes nothing.
China needs to reform.
First, some Han Chinese people started a false rumor about Uighurs raping a Chinese girl. This led to some innocent Uighurs being beat up in a factory. This led to a peaceful protest demonstration by some Uighurs.
Then, the Chinese authorities went in and brutally suppressed the demonstration. This is what sparked the violence. So instead of blaming organizations of Uighurs in the West who are trying to call attention to the plight of the Uighur people, the Chinese leadership should look in the mirror.
You are yourself spreading rumors.
In western countries, such as the riot happened in Los Angelas, USA, those who claimed to be "peaceful" but in fact hurt or even killed innocent civilians will be punished, because they break the law.
One sided story telling is the basis of rumors, just like what you did.
Let the violent stop first, anything contributing to the escalation of violent is a crime against all human beings!
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