Washington (AFP)

Zoom said on Wednesday that he had temporarily closed the US account of activists who commemorated the deadly Chinese crackdown on Tiananmen, raising concerns about free speech on the containment-boosted videoconference service.

Human rights activists based in the United States had used this software to organize a virtual meeting between more than 250 people to honor the memory of the victims of the military intervention in Beijing which, on the night of June 3-4, 1989, ended seven weeks of pro-democracy protests in China.

Humanitarian China said it had involved several people from China, where this bloody episode is taboo. A week later, his paid Zoom account was closed without explanation, as originally reported by the Axios news site.

The Zoom account was finally reactivated on Wednesday, Zhou Fengsuo, co-founder of the association, who was one of the most wanted people in Beijing after Tiananmen, told AFP.

The videoconferencing service acknowledged having closed and reinstated it.

"Like any global society, we must respect the laws in force in the jurisdictions where we operate," said a spokesperson for Zoom. "When a meeting is organized across several countries, participants in those countries must respect their respective local laws," he added.

He said the company was trying to stick to "the actions necessary to comply with local laws" while "constantly reassessing and improving" its decisions in this area.

Activists have expressed outrage, suspecting the company has been under direct pressure from Chinese Communist leaders.

"If so, Zoom is complicit in the attempt to erase the memory of the Tiananmen massacre in collaboration with an authoritarian government," Humanitarian China said in a statement.

The organization said Zoom is an "essential" service for staying in touch with people in China despite censorship.

Beijing has put in place a sophisticated system to ban any information that is embarrassing for its leaders.

Its vast and very attractive market regularly poses dilemmas for the American giants of new technologies, who pride themselves on allowing total freedom of expression in the United States.

Zoom has recorded strong financial results since the start of the containment imposed by the pandemic of new coronavirus around the world, companies, schools, individuals and institutions having jumped on this service to continue their interactions.

© 2020 AFP