As first reported on Global Voices on August 28, all Tibetan language blogsites (except for one) were inaccessible for almost the whole month of August. The reasons for the closures of the blogsites were unclear at the time but now it appears to be linked to a wider effort within the People's Republic of China to eradicate anonymity on the web.
A September 5 article in the New York Times reports that in compliance with secret government orders, web users are required to log on under their true identities to post comments. For a commentary on these new regulations, please see this blogpost by China internet expert Rebecca MacKinnon.
Tibetan language blogsite tibetabc.cn has returned online with a new notice (photo above) on the main page that reads:
Because of difficulties we are unable to recreate the blog pages. For this reason you first need to log onto the administration page and recreate your new blog profile. Our apologies for creating many difficulties, one more thing to say, please pay careful attention to the content of your posts.
Another popular Tibetan language blogsite, tibettl.com, carries a smaller notice (photo above) that simply reads:
Create a new blog account and after creating a new account you can access your old account.
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