Mali's junta seeks help as Tuareg rebels make gains
SHANGHAI, March 31 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities shut 16 websites and detained six people accused of spreading rumours of unusual military vehicle movements in Beijing, state media reported, after the political downfall of one of the ruling communist party's senior leaders.
Authorities closed the websites for spreading rumours of “military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing,” Xinhua news agency said late on Friday, citing a spokesman with the State Internet Information Office (SIIO).
The spokesman said that two popular microblogging sites also had been “criticized and punished accordingly”.
The March 15 ouster of Bo Xilai as party chief of the inland city of Chongqing, who was linked to a scandal involving a senior aide, has shaken China's Communist Party as it readies for a top leadership change later this year.
After Bo was sacked, popular microblogs, including those run by Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd, were awash with speculation about a government coup. Sina and Tencent shut the comment functions on their popular microblogging sites from March 31 to April 3 to “clean up rumours and other illegal information spreading” through the site, Xinhua said. On Saturday, Sina's Weibo users could still make posts, though other users could not respond.
Beijing-based microbloggers had previously been ordered to register their real names by mid-march or face unspecified legal consequences.
Many users fear Internet restrictions like those for Beijing and other regions are aimed at muzzling often raucous, and perhaps most significantly, anonymous, online chat in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open discussion.
BAMAKO, March 31, 2012 (AFP) Mali's embattled coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo has called for outside help as advancing Tuareg and Islamist fighters seized ground, including a key northern town, from overwhelmed soldiers.
The Mali army said early Saturday it had pulled its troops out of two towns in the country's northeast, hours after Tuareg separatist rebels forced them out of the strategic town of Kidal.
“We have strategically abandoned our positions in the towns of Ansogo and Bourem to reinforce our positions in Gao,” the army said in a statement.
Gao is the largest town in northern Mali that remains under the control of Mali's new ruling junta.
The appeal from Sanogo came Friday as the weekold junta, already frozen out by its foreign allies, stares down possible economic sanctions from neighbouring countries, demanding a return to democracy, which could cripple the landlocked nation.
Angry at the old government's “incompetence” in dealing with the conflict, the renegade soldiers chased President Amadou Toumani Toure out of power on March 22, a move which prompted stiff rebukes from abroad.
“The rebels continue to attack our country and terrorise our people,” coup leader Sanogo told journalists at the military barracks outside Bamako which have become the junta's headquarters.
“The situation is now critical, our army needs support from Mali's friends to save the civilian population and protect Mali's territorial integrity.”after heavy fighting, Tuareg separatist rebels and an allied armed Islamist group on Friday entered Kidal, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the capital.