Gay websites fight back in campaign against recent ISP closings

• Source: Global Times
• [02:54 January 14 2010]
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By Andrew Tait

A meeting was held Tuesday in Beijing between the legal team of the Aizhixing Institute and a group of webmasters whose gay awareness sites have been forced to close.

The closures began last November when ISPs across China began forcibly closing down, or simply deleting, websites which they claimed contained "immoral information and pornographic literature."

The meeting was chaired by Wan Yanhai, AIDS activist and founder of the Beijing-based Aizhixing Institute. Starting at the end of 2009, Wan began offering free legal support to webmasters who were affected by the closures, as well as any AIDS sufferers and special groups who were being discriminated against.

Twelve webmasters have so far contacted the Aizhixing Institute to request help.

In an open letter posted on their website on January 8, Shanghai Domain Network told its users, "for giving services to sites which have bad information, causing bad influence on our China youths, we are sincerely sorry." The letter continued on to say, "any website we find that does not meet the 'Internet information management approach' will never reopen. Finally, once again to the majority of Internet users and traffic management sector, Shanghai Telecom's management sincerely apologize."

Gay websites in Beijing, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Qingdao, Guangzhou, and Hohhot have also been targeted.

"Websites are operated healthily, they mainly include AIDS prevention and treatment, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) culture and chat rooms. So we hold the opinion that webmasters can negotiate or take legal action based on their service contract with their ISP," said Lan Yujiao, project assistant for Aizhixing.

The closures come at a time when the government is in the midst of a wide-ranging campaign to stamp out Internet pornography and websites with "unsuitable content."