HONG KONG -- Access to an online museum set up to memorialize victims of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 was restricted in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
While the city government made no statement about the move, attempts by Nikkei Asia to access the offshore-based site using several local networks failed.
The move comes two weeks after authorities forced the group that had set up a physical version of the museum in Hong Kong to remove the contents of its website and social media accounts. The authorities on Wednesday also froze the group's ownership of the museum property.
"If the website is blocked, the right to freedom of information of Hong Kong people and all other people related to the museum will be violated," said Chang Ping, a Chinese journalist living in exile in Germany who runs the online museum. "We believe that this is a disgraceful act to erase historical memory."
The apparent internet blockade is yet another example of acts by authorities to silence opposition voices since the imposition of a national security law by Beijing in June last year.
The June 4th Museum of Memory and Human Rights opened online early August and is operated independently by an offshore team led by Chang. While conceived and funded initially by the local organizer of an annual vigil held on June 4 in Hong Kong, the movement decided to detach the online operation from itself to avoid any possible implications.
"Our tech team has confirmed that our website has been blocked within Hong Kong," Chang said.
Nikkei reporters in Hong Kong tried to access the site through the telecommunication networks of PCCW, Smartone and China Mobile Hong Kong but were unable to do so as of late afternoon.
A spokesman for PCCW declined to comment about the blockade, while Smartone and China Mobile Hong Kong did not respond to requests for comment.
The website can still be viewed in Hong Kong on a virtual private network, or VPN, or by changing to a different domain name system, or DNS.
Police froze the assets of the physical June 4th Museum on Wednesday, even though it was already shut down in June and raided earlier this month. (Photo by Kenji Kawase) The online museum is a repository of recollections of the crackdown, with six pages titled "time," "space," "personage," "Hong Kong," "media," and "literature and arts." It was backed by crowdfunding less than a month before the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. Around 1.68 million Hong Kong dollars ($215,850) was raised from 1,186 individual donors.
This is not the first website to be blocked in Hong Kong under the national security law. In January, authorities cited the law to compel internet providers to disrupt access to HKChronicles, a website that compiled information on anti-government protests and the personal data of police officers and those who publicly expressed support for them.
On Wednesday, a bill targeted at "doxxing" -- the act of posting others' personal information online -- was debated by the city's legislature, despite alarm from global platform operators, such as Facebook and Twitter.
The bill aims to criminalize such disclosures and empower the city's designated officer to launch criminal investigations, seize evidence even without a warrant and prosecute cases, according to a draft of the law. Violators could face up to five years' imprisonment and fines of 1 million Hong Kong dollars.
The national security department of the police on Wednesday also froze all the assets of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, including the physical June 4th Museum, according to the group, which resolved to disband on Saturday.
According to Richard Tsoi Yiu-cheong, one of the two liquidators of the Alliance, he was brought to the museum by a police officer and handed a document signed by Hung Ngan, a police commissioner, and Secretary of Security Chris Tang Ping-keung.
In the three-page notice accompanying the main letter, Tang said there were "reasonable grounds to suspect" that the museum premise is an "offense related property." Along with the 19 accounts in three banks -- HSBC, Hang Seng Bank and Bank of East Asia -- which were already frozen earlier in the month, the Alliance was told it "must not deal" with these properties for two years.
Tsoi said the move by the police was "unexpected and unagreeable" as the Alliance was already disbanding. He demanded police free the premises and accounts to facilitate the liquidation process.
The physical museum was forced to close on June 2, just four days after it had reopened following a renovation and two days before the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, on allegations by the city's food and environmental hygiene department that it lacked proper licenses to operate. In a police raid earlier in the month, a truckload of relics, documents, exhibits and records were taken away.
The Alliance itself has been one of the most active and symbolic pro-democracy organizations in Hong Kong. It was initiated by Szeto Wah, a late iconic figure of the city's drive for democracy and a supporter of the 1989 student movement for political freedom in mainland China.