Yahoo has provided China with evidence that helped them convict a Yahoo email user, Jiang Lijun. Here’s some info and there is an action you can do below!
Yahoo Inc. may have helped Chinese police to identify an Internet writer who was subsequently jailed for four years for subversion in the third such case, an advocacy group for journalists said on Wednesday.
News implicating Yahoo in the imprisonment of Jiang Lijun in 2003 surfaced on the eve of a summit between Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Bush in Washington.
It was the third such case involving the U.S. Internet giant.
[…]
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said it had obtained a copy of the verdict showing that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) helped Chinese police to identify Jiang by confirming that the e-mail account ZYMZd2002 had been used jointly by Jiang and another pro-democracy activist Li Yibing.
“Little by little we are piecing together the evidence for what we have long suspected, that Yahoo! is implicated in the arrest of most of the people that we have been defending,” the group said.
“We hope this Internet giant will not, as it has each time it has been challenged previously, hide behind its local partner, Alibaba, to justify its behavior. Whatever contract it has with this partner, the e-mail service is marketed as Yahoo!,” it said.
Not that Yahoo’s behavior in the past suggested they had only helped imprison journalists, cyber dissidents and democracy advocates on a limited basis. No, it now is clear that Yahoo has a delibrate and concrete policy to assist the Chinese Communist Party repress all forms of freedom, democracy, and dissent that might manifest themselves online.
It is truly disgraceful that American companies are allowed to undermine abroad the freedoms and protections our government gives to them which has promoted their profit and wealth. Where is their respect for freedom of thought, freedom of information, and the value of democracy? Where is the outrage of their share holders and Board of Directors? Where is the US government in the regulatory process of activities that should be illegal for US companies to do?
Click here to send a message to Yahoo’s executives (and Microsoft and Cisco’s too) and tell them to stop censoring the truth and helping China suppress dissent.
March 28th, 2008 at 10:36 am
[…] Yahoo and MSN have a long and troubled history when it comes to respecting human rights in China. Both outlets, though Yahoo more prominently, have handed over private user data and emails to help China persecute cyber dissidents. Yahoo has given managerial control of Yahoo! China to Alibaba, a Chinese internet company, who evidently has far lower consideration for human rights and privacy than an American company like Yahoo! But the key distinction is that in a situation where Yahoo Inc could have had strong protections for Chinese users and high standards for content created in China, they refused the power in lieu of a set up that allows the Chinese government to use Yahoo! China as an extension of their police state. […]