Press Esc

Internet domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy has come under heavy criticism for suspending 10 Chinese human rights sites without warning on August 17.

The United States-based company originally told that the administrators of the 10 Chinese sites including chinesepen.org and Huang Qi’s 64tianwang.com could be suspended because of a server problem and asked them to provide log-on passwords within 72 hours so that the problem could investigated.

The sites were suspended later the same day, and according to US based Chinese newspaper, The Boxun, the server problem was just a pretext to bring down the human rights sites.

“The situation of online free expression in China is difficult enough already, so foreign companies need to act with the utmost transparency,” the press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said. “One cannot rule out the possibility of Chinese government pressure on companies hosting websites that are already blocked in China. Go Daddy’s silence leaves too much room for doubt.”

Go Daddy refused to give any explanations for the suspension, and instead told the site owners that they would now have to apply for reactivation.

The reactivation procedure could many days and there is no guarantee the sites will be restored.

The Boxun has asked customers who have had similar experience with GoDaddy to come forward, so they could collectively launch a law suit against the company.

GoDaddy is not the first Internet company to commit human rights violations to avoid falling foul with the regime in China. Google and Microsoft have been accused of censoring content deemed subversive by the Beijing government, while Yahoo allegedly supplied logs to Chinese authorities that resulted in a dissident journalist being sent to prison for 10 years.