European telecom commissioner designate Neelie Kroes says she is worried by reports that computer hackers are targetting human rights activists in China.

Speaking to the European parliament, she said that, if the reports about the cyber attacks were true, they represented a clear breach of human rights. Ms Kroes is the outgoing competition commissioner and has been re-nominated, this time to police the telecom and internet sectors for the European Union.

She told members of the European parliament that, if she became telecom commissioner, she would work to remove cross-border internet barriers and to get more elderly people to use the internet.

The search engine giant, Google, is accusing hackers in China of sophisticated cyber attacks on the e-mail accounts of a number of Chinese human rights activists. The company is threatening to end its operations in China and has announced it will no longer comply with China's censorship rules.

Chinese internet users can now see the famous photograph of a man stopping a tank during the 1989 Tiananmen protests via Google. The photograph, which is a symbol of the brutal repression of the Tiananmen protests, is banned by the government in Beijing.

photo: Neelie Kroes (ANP)