We’ve certainly seen no shortage of websites knocked offline by Anonymous, which tends to go after sites it perceives as being a threat to the idea of a free and open web. This one’s a little different. Boxun.com is a site run out of North Carolina by a Chinese dissident and it’s dedicated to rights abuses in China. Late last week, the site’s hosting service, Name.com,  received some threatening emails telling it to take the site offline or face attack. Soon after, the attack came and Name.com told Boxun.com that it couldn’t keep both its site and the other 1.5 million sites online, so Boxun moved to a new host.

From Ars Technica:

The attack occurred after days of Boxun’s reporting on a scandal involving Bo Xilai, a recently-sacked member of the Communist party whose wife is accused of collusion in the murder of a British consultant and businessman.

During the DDoS attack, Name.com also received a second e-mail saying, “that unless we handed over the domain to the attackers and told the original owner that it was stolen, the attackers would continue the DDoS attack of our website and nameservers. At this point we helped the customer transfer the domain to another registrar as quickly as possible.”

Boxun says it suspects the Chinese government itself is behind the attacks.