China's 'Great Firewall' blocks off YouTube

Following reports that access to the site had been cut, a spokesperson from parent company Google confirmed to vnunet.com that YouTube was indeed being blocked.

"We do not know the reason for the blockage and are working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users in China," the spokesperson said. The company declined to comment further on whether it was speaking with the Chinese government about the matter.

The block is reported to have stemmed from a recent round of videos depicting protests and police reactions in Tibet. According to the BBC, one particular video depicted a policeman beating Tibetan monks and protestors.

This is not the first time that YouTube has run afoul of the Chinese government. Last year, similar Tibetan protest videos lead the country to block domestic access to the site.

Civil rights groups have long been pressuring the country to relax its controls on web content for sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia.

YouTube has also seen itself the target of censorship campaigns from other governments, such as Burma and Turkey over contentious video clips.