**Chinese hackers have attacked the website of Australia’s biggest film festival over a documentary about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.**Content on the Melbourne International Film Festival site was briefly replaced with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans on Saturday, reports said.
In an earlier protest on Friday, Beijing withdrew four Chinese films.
Melbourne’s The Age newspaper says private security guards have been hired to protect Kadeer and other film-goers.
She is due to attend the screening of Ten Conditions of Love, by Australian documentary-maker Jeff Daniels, on 8 August.
‘Vile language’
Chinese authorities blame Kadeer - leader of the World Uighur Congress - for inciting ethnic unrest in Xinjiang, charges she denies.
Earlier this month, around 200 people died and 1,600 were injured during fighting in the region between the mostly Muslim Uighurs and settlers from China’s Han majority.
Kadeer, 62, spent six years in a Chinese prison before she was released into exile in the US in 2005. In 2004, she won the Rafto Prize for human rights.
Richard Moore, head of the Melbourne International Film Festival, told the Age his staff had been bombarded with abusive emails after the festival refused the Chinese government’s demands to withdraw the film about Kadeer and cancel her invitation to the festival.
“The language has been vile,” Mr Moore said. “It is obviously a concerted campaign to get us.”
He said police were investigating the website attacks, which appear to come from a Chinese internet address.