Access to online services such as instant messaging app Line has been blocked in China since Tuesday in a move allegedly intended to curb Hong Kong's pro-democracy campaign, according to Want China Times.

Mainland users said they were unable to access or send messages in Line and KakaoTalk, instant messaging services owned by South Korean companies, Naver Corp. and Kakao Corp., respectively.

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Likewise, there have also been reports that Yahoo's photo sharing site, Flickr and Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service were inaccessible.
Observers said the first service disruptions happened on Tuesday, that coincidentally happened around the same time thousands of people took to the streets in Hong Kong to rally and demanded that they choose their own leaders.

A number of anti-censorship groups believe that the Chinese government had intentionally disrupted the above programs in a bid to prevent the spread of Hong Kong pro-democracy supporters which it views as a threat to its Communist Party rule, Reuters reported.

"This is not a technical malfunction. I imagine these latest blocks are attributable to the Hong Kong demonstrations," said Charlie Smith, a member of China-based anti-censorship site GreatFire.org.

He further speculated that the services may have been blocked mainly for their photo sharing abilities.
Some users of Chinese micro-blog, Weibo, who commented on the Hong Kong rally on Tuesday claimed that their accounts had been removed or blocked.

Additionally, it must be noted that mainland users said they were able to access the above apps and services only through the use of VPNs that served to get past China's firewalls.

In the past, Beijing has been accused of disrupting and manipulating online internet services to crackdown on online opposition to its rule.

Just last month, the country blocked a number of Google Inc.'s services including email client, Gmail, its search engine and its online ad services. The service disruption was allegedly attributed to the Tiananmen Square 25th anniversary. 

TagsYahoo, Flickr, OneCloud, KakaoTalk, censorship, Hong Kong pro-democracy, Hong Kong independence