The website of the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper being bought by Internet giant Alibaba, has become inaccessible in China during a series of high-level government meetings in Beijing.

Attempts by AFP in China on Friday to open the newspaper’s English and Chinese-language websites returned only error messages saying that the pages could not be displayed.

The scmp.com website was blocked starting on March 3, according to the security website GreatFire.org, which monitors online censorship in China.

China’s Communist Party oversees a vast censorship system – dubbed the Great Firewall – that aggressively blocks sites or snuffs out Internet and TV content and commentary on topics considered sensitive, such as Beijing’s human rights record and criticisms of the government.

Popular social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter are inaccessible in the country, as is Youtube.

Several Western news organisations have accused China of blocking access to their websites in the past, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Reuters.

The SCMP’s Chinese-language public account on WeChat, a popular chat app, was also inaccessible.

The paper’s account on China’s Twitter-like Weibo had also disappeared by Friday.

Alibaba’s purchase of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post for $266 million, announced in December, has sparked fears the newspaper will lose its independent voice, in what analysts see as part of a gradual erosion of press freedoms after the semi-autonomous city was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

A China-based Taiwanese singer who has called for reunification with the mainland drew public ire after returning to his homeland for an operation that could cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

Huang An has styled himself as a “Taiwan independence buster”, publicly criticising fellow pop stars who appear opposed to reunification with China, where he has lived for more than 15 years.

But on Thursday he returned to Taiwan on a charter flight for an eight-hour heart operation that local media estimated could cost up to Tw$800,000 (S$33,564) – most of which would be covered under the island’s universal healthcare system.

“Mr Huang must not be confident in the level of healthcare where he lives,” Huang Wei-che of the Beijing-sceptic Democratic People’s Party told reporters in Taipei.

“Otherwise why would he want to come back to take advantage of Taiwan’s universal health insurance, despite his controversial arguments in China?” The event also sparked debate on social media, where many called for the government to change the rules around who is covered by the national health insurance.

Celebrities allegedly ‘exposed’ by Taiwan singer Huang An

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Apple Daily, Various sources

“A traitor deserves our resources? He should go back to China – a man who betrayed his country only to please China has no right to be treated using Taiwan’s medical resources,” wrote Chia Chi Chang on Apple Daily newspaper’s Facebook page.

Huang made news in January after he posted a video online of 16-year-old K-Pop singer Chou Tzu-yu waving a Taiwanese flag, stoking anger in China and accusations Chou was a pro-independence advocate.

China is a key market for Korean music and Chou was forced to apologise, but in Taiwan public anger was largely directed towards Huang.

Huang, who is also a television host and writer, moved to Beijing in the late 1990s after his star faded at home.

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after a civil war but Beijing still considers the self-ruled island part of its territory awaiting reunification – by force if necessary.

Tensions eased under president Ma Ying-jeou of the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party, which had ruled the island for almost all of its modern history.

But relations cooled when the Democratic Progressive Party claimed a landslide victory in January elections, with anti-China sentiment a large part of its rise.

Chou Tzu-yu, the 16-year-old K-pop starlet who outraged China

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Internet screengrabs

Indonesia does not want one of the country’s most notorious terrorists, Hambali, returned home should the United States close the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention centre, a senior minister said Friday.

Riduan Isamuddin was captured in Thailand in 2003 and spent the next three years being flown between secret prisons until his transfer to Guantanamo, where he has been held without charge ever since.

At the time of his capture Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, was believed to be Al-Qaeda’s top representative in Southeast Asia and operational chief of regional militant group Jemaah Islamiyah.

He was accused of masterminding the 2002 Bali bombings that left 202 people dead, and plotting other attacks on US airliners and foreigners.

Hambali is one of 91 inmates still detained in the military prison, set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks to deal with prisoners deemed “enemy combatants”, and denied many US legal rights.

A roadmap to closing Guantanamo unveiled by President Obama last month prompted speculation in Indonesia that Hambali could be repatriated, but Jakarta has made it clear it does want anything to do with the alleged terror kingpin.

“It’s very clear that we do not want to add any more problems in our country,” security minister Luhut Panjaitan told reporters when asked about Hambali.

A sustained crackdown in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, weakened many of the most dangerous extremist networks responsible for a string of deadly homegrown attacks during the 2000s.

But an attack in Jakarta earlier this year claimed by the Islamic State group sparked fears of a resurgence in militancy, and shone the spotlight on the country’s weak laws and lax jails where prominent radicals have been recruiting behind bars.

Panjaitan said an urgent revision of Indonesia’s anti-terror laws was needed as authorities were currently powerless to stop would-be militants heading abroad to fight with extremist groups.

The government has submitted to parliament new draft measures to bolster Indonesia’s fight against extremism, including broader powers to detain suspects “This new terrorism law stipulates the state is authorised to revoke their citizenship if they join foreign fighters,” he said.