Group says its website calling for democracy protests in China was hacked

<p>BEIJING, China – A group that has issued calls for pro-democracy protests in China said its Google-hosted site was hacked Thursday, amid a far-reaching government crackdown on activists.</p> <p>Molihuaxingdong – or “jasmine movement” in Chinese – runs one of several websites that have put out weekly appeals for peaceful protests in various cities across China and elsewhere. At least half a dozen other websites also issue similar protest calls.</p> <p>Though the calls have attracted few outright protesters, they have spooked the Chinese government into launching one of its broadest campaigns of repression in years to keep the protests from catching on, as they have in the Middle East and North Africa.</p> <p>The “jasmine movement” group told The Associated Press by email that all of the content on its site had been removed Thursday afternoon.</p> <p>Where previously the group’s site contained pages of text, photos and other content, on Thursday the site became an empty page bearing only the words: “long live the jasmine flower.” Hours later, the group posted a notice about the attack on the site, saying it believed its data and content could be recovered.</p> <p>Google had no immediate comment when the Mountain View, California-based company’s spokespeople in Asia were reached by phone and email Thursday.</p> <p>Other websites that have posted calls for protests or advocated for the release of detained dissidents have come under attack from hackers in recent months. Hundreds of lawyers, activists, and other intellectuals have been questioned, detained, confined to their homes or simply disappeared, apparently to squelch any chance of a popular rising.</p> <p>The U.S.-based social-networking site Change.org said on April 19 that its website suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack making it inaccessible after it issued a call for the release of Chinese artist and government critic Ai Weiwei. The website helps users start campaigns to advance specific causes.</p> <p>The appeal had met with responses from than 90,000 people in 175 countries, but the shutdown was apparently caused by a malicious co-ordinated attack by a flood of computers all trying to connect to the single site at the same time, which overwhelm the computer server that handles the traffic.</p> <p>The U.S.-based Chinese-language dissident news site Boxun.com came under a similar attack in late February after anonymous protest calls were posted on its forum.</p>