Beijing: Text messaging services restarted with some restrictions on Sunday for cell phone users in far Western China, more than six months after deadly ethnic rioting prompted the government to shut them down.
Users are once again able to send text messages
throughout China, but sending texts to overseas numbers
remains prohibited, a staffer with the information office of
the Xinjiang provincial government said. She declined to give
her name as is customary.
Calls to a service hot line for state-owned China Mobile
in the western region were answered with a message that said
texting had resumed but "in order to prevent this service
being made use of by lawless persons, each person will be
allowed to send a maximum of 20 messages a day."
Last July riots in the provincial capital of Urumqi
between Xinjiang's native ethnic minority Uighurs and the
majority Han Chinese residents left nearly 200 people dead.
The government blamed the violence on overseas groups
pushing for broader rights for Uighurs in Xinjiang, though the
groups denied it.
Authorities accused organisers of using text messages and
the Internet to organise the protests and promptly shut down
cell phone lines and Web sites to "calm the situation."
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, January 17, 2010, 18:03