14 DAY TRIAL // The entire world watched the evolution of the Pope's health condition and news sites have generated contradictory news for many days. Everybody, Christian or not, has discussed the sad events from San Pietro square. Who could contrast with the world wide compassion and the wish of getting close to religion? The black sheep of the Internet, China, a country which always had something to say if the subject had a corruptive potential.
Several Chinese portals hosted during Saturday discussions, "get well" messages and even favors, all for Pope John Paul II. However, if Saturday the messages were online, by Monday all of them had been deleted because of the censorship system.
A spokesman from Sohu.com has confirmed that the company censored the comments related to the Pope using technologies that allowed only the author of the message to see his own comments.
"We chose this solution because religion is a very delicate subject in China and we don't want to cause displeasures or too "steamy" discussions", said the official from Sohu.com. "The messages not deleted, only a restriction preventing everyone but the author of a message to read what he wrote has been imposed ".
Asked if the portal acted at the government's request, the spokesman insisted that the decision has been taken only by the company. "We feared that because of misunderstanding the differences between religions, some inappropriate remarks could have arisen".
The Beijing police was not too impressed by the obvious display of censorship and although they denied knowing any real case of censorship, the institution sustained the censorship measures applied so often to the Internet.