Illegal, so no e-mail for Falungong

Bloomberg News, July 24, 1999

Illegal, so no e-mail for Falungong

BEIJING -- China suspended local Internet-based e-mail services at the same time it declared the Falungong movement an illegal organisation, in a bid to limit group members' ability to communicate on-line.

Users of a popular Chinese-language service at www.263.net are told that free e-mail services have been suspended for 48 hours starting Thursday.

Thousands of Falungong followers were detained on Wednesday, after staging a protest over the arrest of leaders of the sect.

Falungong members in China rely on e-mail and the sect's US-based website to share information about the government crackdown and to coordinate their response. The website is no longer accessible from within China.

It is unclear if the suspension covered major international providers of Web-based e-mail -- www.yahoo.com and www.hotmail.com sites were still available yesterday. --