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A law suit filed in San Francisco against Yahoo! on behalf of Wang Xiaoning who was jailed in China for 10 years due to his online activities was made public recently. Wang’s case was first reported by Human Rights in China almost a year ago. Chinese court document included evidence provided by Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd identifying Wang’s Yahoo! email address and Yahoo! Group in which he distributed his political writings.
Wang’s wife, Yu Ling came to the US over a month ago to look for help filing the law suit. When I first heard about her trip, I was wondering anyone would step up to take it on. Fortunately in the land of law suits, the official filing came in less than two months after Yu’s first step into Washington, DC. Now that the suit is filed, Yu went back to China and she expected the worst because being outspoken never ends well in China.
Related news and links:
- HRIC: Prisoner Profile – Wang Xiaoning
- RFA – Mandarin Service (Simplified Chinese): Internet writer Wang Xiaoning’s wife arrived in US to sue Yahoo (Mandarin audio broadcast)
- Wired: ‘Yahoo Betrayed My Husband’
- NPR: All Things Considered – Group Targets Yahoo Inc. Over China Cases
- Washington Post: Advocates Sue Yahoo In Chinese Torture Case
- New York Times: Chinese Political Prisoner Sues in U.S. Court, Saying Yahoo Helped Identify Dissidents
- Wired blog – Threat Level: Chinese Cyber-Dissident and Wife Sue Yahoo (official court filing against Yahoo!)
Update (4-24-2007): Rebecca MacKinnon’s comments on the law suit in her blog compared the Chinese court document with the court filing in the US. Her other comments raised good arguments towards Yahoo’s response on the case and some great input on how Yahoo should honestly explain the way it treats its users’ privacy.
- RConversation: Victims’ lawsuit against Yahoo!
- RConversation: The Yahoo! lawsuit: picking through Chinese and English legal documents
The discussion on internet censorship has really heated up this year, especially when Amnesty International began to raise the case of Shi Tao whose email – sent through his Yahoo! account – landed him 10 years in prison. Human rights activists bombarded Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft with confrontations of all forms about their practices of censorship in China. The companies bounced back with their corporate style PR claiming that providing some form of access to the internet in China is better than none. A recent BBC News article examined whether the criticism was justified. The most outrageous comment I found in that article was (about the number of people imprisoned in China due to their postings on the internet): “fifty seven people arrested in a country of 1.4 billion is not very much.”
That’s like assuming the entire population of China has access to the internet. Similar to how American companies race to sell their products in China because they think there would be 1.4 billion people buying their products. While it’s hard to tell exactly how many Chinese citizens can afford the luxury of American goods, there are certainly many groups within the entire population of China would not experience US products and services any time soon. For example:
- By the end of 2005, China reported 23.65 million people living below the poverty line based on an annual per capita income of 85 US dollars.
- As of December 2003, there were 1,548,498 people in prison (excluding 230,000 in administrative detention).
- As of September 2006, there are 1,045 forced labor camps in operation that hold a few hundreds to several thousands of prisoners.
On the other hand, China benefited greatly from manufacturing American products for decades. Home-grown companies (such as Ningbo Bird and Lenovo) are now ready to compete for a piece of that “1.4 billion” market and even taking bites out of the US market. The magic number seems smaller now, isn’t it?
The new debate though is whether Westerners have exaggerated the effects of internet censorship in China. It seems that ordinary Chinese could care less about it until a family member gets into trouble with the authorities. I think the business practices of the US companies and Chinese attitude towards internet censorship should be treated as separate issues. What those companies do is simply wrong. My argument would be that they could do it in China so they can do the same in other countries. As for the lack of interest with the issue in China, we need to examine the different environments of freedom of expression. Information control is the norm in China and some journalists even practice self censorship. And for Westerners, individualism is key so freedom of expression is like a birth right.
All in all, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be the only standard we use regardless of culture. As a human rights activist, I believe that the violation of one person’s rights is already too many and we should continue to speak out for all those imprisoned due to censorship of all forms.
Related links:
- Andrew Lih: Internet attitudes in China
- Rebecca MacKinnon: Censorship, apathy, and free thinking or lack thereof…
For years, Americans have been going overseas to teach English. China has caught on the same idea sending volunteers around the world to teach Chinese. It’s kind of a way to send love to get love back. Most likely a smarter way towards world domination than starting fights everywhere. There is an article in Wired magazine about it.
And in the US, the Department of Defense awarded a grant to support the expansion of Chinese language program in Oregon. Kids can learn Chinese all the way from kindergarten through college. It’s not a bad thing overall but why is the money coming from the Defense department? Shouldn’t it be more appropriate to have the Education department involved? But we all know where our tax dollars went these days so we have to take what we can get.
Related news:
- Washington Post, January 2006: Mandarin Makes Inroads in U.S. Schools
- US Department of Defense, January 2006: Media Roundtable with Dr. David Chu, Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness)
During my presentation about Shi Tao, someone asked whether other countries censor the Internet like China. My answer was yes and then a section of Wired magazine came to mind. I looked around the magazine website for the article and couldn’t find it. I finally dug through the old pile of magazines at home and found the September 2005 issue. The section from “START: infoporn” titled “Access Denied! Countries that censor Web content – and what really offends them” was nowhere to be found online. The actual section in print shows a graphical presentation of “how nations control net traffic.” The selected countries on display were Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, China, Bahrain, and Singapore. A lot of attention was placed on blocking porn. If anyone is heading to the library, look for the September 2005 issue of Wired magazine and flip to pages 46-47.
The sources for the article listed were OpenNet Initiative and Reporters Without Borders.
