Yahoo Inc.’s popular Internet photo site Flickr.com was blocked in China, the company said Wednesday, amid reports that authorities restricted access due to photos of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.Pauline Wong, a spokeswoman for Yahoo Hong Kong, said the company was aware that some pictures on the popular site could not be accessed from inside China although the website itself could be surfed.
"Yahoo recently did some testing on different versions including accessibility, then we found out some of the images cannot be surfed (on the Chinese site)," Wong said. "We are investigating the issue. We know that it's not a technical issue. There appears to be some kind of restrictions on access." Yahoo Hong Kong has contacted authorities in China but have not heard back from them, she said.
Internet postings and news reports said access to the site was blocked soon after photos of the bloody crackdown on the 1989 June 4 Tiananmen democracy protests began appearing there in recent weeks. Hundreds, if not thousands of unarmed protesters and citizens were gunned down in Beijing ending six weeks of unprecedented democracy protests. The massacre remains taboo in China.
Flickr is a site that allows users to post, store and exchange photographs online.
In the past, Yahoo has been accused of bowing to China's Internet censorship rules in an effort to access the nation's huge and growing web population.
A spokesman at Yahoo China in Beijing refused to comment, saying only that Flickr.com was not a part of Yahoo China and was being run and managed outside of the country.
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