Zoom shuts account of US-based Chinese dissidents after Tiananmen anniversary meeting
Tiananmen Square
Video conferencing app Zoomclosed the account of exiled dissidents in the USafter they held a Zoom event commemorating the31st anniversary of the June 4 TiananmenSquare Massacre.
The event on May 31 saw participants dial in from China to listen to the testimonies of a number of people tied to the events of June 4, including the mother of a slain protester, a Beijing resident imprisoned for 17 years for his participation, and multiple exiled student leaders.
On June 7, organisers discovered that the paid Zoom account that they set up for the forum had been disabled, said Zhou Fengsuo, a US-based human rights activist and president of Humanitarian China, the group that hosted the event.
A statement from Zoom, which is accessible from within China without a VPN, suggested that it had taken the action because participants joining the conference from China had violated ''local laws''.
''We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law and continuously review and improve our process on these matters.''
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The activists voiced outrage, saying the company may have been under direct pressure from China’s communist leaders.
''If so, Zoom is complicit in erasing the memories of the Tiananmen massacre in collaboration with an authoritarian government,'' HumanitarianChinasaid in a statement.
Zoom reported on Tuesday that itsearnings had soaredin the quarter ending 30 April as companies and individuals, cooped up inside due to Covid-19 lockdowns, embraced the platform to meet online.
Its rapid growth has not been without previous problems, with the company forced to confront a rash of unwelcome gatecrashers who hacked into Zoom sessions.
Beijing has developed a sophisticated “Great Firewall” that aims to keep out news that is damaging to the leadership.
Authorities go to extraordinary lengths each year to ban commemorations of the Tiananmen crackdown, in which the military killed hundreds of unarmed protesters – by some estimates, more than 1,000 – who had packed the capital to seek reform.
It called Zoom an “essential” resource in reaching audiences inside China, which rigorously enforces censorship.