China Bans Wikipedia in All Languages
Following the ban on Wikipedia in Mandarin language, the Chinese Government has now started to shut down the online encyclopedia in all languages across mainland China.
“In late April, the Wikimedia Foundation determined that Wikipedia was no longer accessible in China. After closely analyzing our internal traffic reports, we can confirm that Wikipedia is currently blocked across all language versions,” said a representative of Wikimedia in a statement released to BBC.
The ban has come a few weeks before anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests 1989 – this is an attempt to restrict the people from reading up about the incident where authorities killed thousands of student activists.
It has been a practice of the Chinese Government to ban various social media and other websites in the country. Earlier in 2015, Wikipedia was banned in Mandarin but now since translations are available and only a few selected pages cannot be made inaccessible – due to Wikipedia’s https based web address – the Government decided to put a blanket ban on the website.
