HK PROTEST-RELATED WEBSITE SAYS GOV’T BLOCKED USERS' ACCESS

A Hong Kong website that publishes material mainly related to anti-government protests in 2019 said its users’ access had been blocked by the city’s internet service providers (ISPs), Jessie Pang and Donny Kwok reported for Reuters.

The website, HKChronicles, said it began receiving reports from Hong Kong-based users saying they were no longer able to access the site as of late Wednesday.

“After discussing and investigating with our supporters, we found that some ISPs of Hong Kong have deliberately dropped any connection to our servers, so that the user could not receive replies from our servers, resulting in an inability to access our content,” chief editor Naomi Chan said in a statement.

The South China Morning Post, citing unnamed sources, said on Sunday that Hong Kong police had invoked the city’s national security law for the first time to block HKChronicles.

The police force had started asking ISPs to halt access, citing Article 43 of the law, the newspaper reported.

“The police will not comment on specific cases,” a Security Bureau spokeswoman said in an emailed response to a Reuters request for comment. “In conducting any operation, the police will act on the basis of actual circumstances and according to the law.”

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