China act against Internet cafes

China act against Internet cafes

Agence France-Presse, Beijing

The Chinese government has ordered the re-registration of all the nation's Internet cafes, state press said Saturday, amid fears the move is designed to limit freedom of access to the world wide web.

"Internet cafes without proper licenses are to be closed and owners will be prosecuted. Those providing sites for Internet cafes without permission will also face prosecution," Liu Yuzhu, an official with the Ministry of Culture was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying.

"Legal Internet cafes are also required to reregister by Oct. 1," he said.

All major dailies on Saturday carried reports on the re- registration drive which begins July 1 and was approved by the State Council following a June 16 fire at a Beijing cyber cafe that killed 24 young people.

Victims of the fire at the Lanjisu Cyber Cafe in Beijing's university district were mostly students at nearby high schools or universities. The fire was allegedly a revenge attack started by two teenage arsonists.

The dead were trapped inside the cramped second-story cafe, which did not have a license and had bars across its windows and a single, locked exit. Another 13 people were injured, many suffering terrible burns.

China has long expressed concern about "unhealthy" web content and curbs access to many sites showing pornography, politically subversive material, foreign news or information on spiritual and religious groups such as the banned Falungong movement.

Rights groups have said that the government is using the fire at the Beijing Internet cafe as a pretext to crackdown harder on the Internet which has given Chinese web surfers unprecedented access to information.

Chinese Internet cafes nationwide are also being ordered to install software that can prevent access to up to 500,000 foreign websites and which can tell police when web surfers access illicit pages, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Software like the "Filter King" program not only record the number of times surfers try to access banned sites, but can also send daily reports to local Internet police units, the center said earlier this week.