"Hong Kong national security law used to briefly shut down website run by opposition activists overseas", 3 June 2021

A website run by a group of Hong Kong activists and fugitives overseas that called for the “liberation” of the city was briefly shut down, after police wrote to the company hosting it saying messages posted there breached the national security law.

Wix, the Israeli web hosting service provider, on Thursday apologised for “mistakenly removing the website”, hours after ex-lawmaker Nathan Law Kwun-chung, who ran the site, called its abrupt closure from Monday to Thursday “a clear example of China’s long arm of influence”.

The website, 2021HKcharter.com, was launched in March by a group of eight activists and fugitives overseas. It sought to unite people like them, and the international community, in the fight against what it called suppression of the city’s freedoms and autonomy.

In a post on his Twitter account on Thursday, Law said Hong Kong police had asked Wix, a cloud-based development platform headquartered in Israel, to “disable our website, otherwise the company could be prosecuted”.

“Wix complied,” Law tweeted. “It shows that our freedom of speech is not protected even when we are not in Hong Kong and China.”

But in a reply to questions from the Post, Wix, which is listed on the Nasdaq, said the website was taken down by mistake.

“We have reviewed our initial screening and have realised that the website never should have been removed and we would like to apologise,” Wix said. The website has been reinstated.

“We are also reviewing our screening process in order to improve and make sure that mistakes such as this do not repeat in the future,” Wix said. [...]