- Businessman Cai Lujun, 35, will be in jail for the next
two years because he posted essays discussing problems affecting Chinese
farmers on the internet.
-
- Zhao Chunying, 57, from Heilongjiang was found beaten
to death in a Chinese jail after being arrested for writing an account
of how she was tortured during a previous detention.
-
- Computer engineer Yang Zili, 31, and freelance writer
Zhang Honghai, 30, were sent to jail for eight years each for "subverting
state power". They had sent articles of political and social concerns
via e-mail.
-
- Web essayist Du Daobin is more fortunate than the others.
-
- This month a Chinese court convicted him of subversion
and gave him a three year sentence. The sentence was suspended and he was
allowed to go home and do four years of probation, which means no more
web commentaries calling for greater democracy in Hong Kong.
-
- Human rights activists in Canada, U.S. and Europe say
these people are among an estimated 100 known Chinese internet users who
have been arrested by China's web police thanks to technology that has
been financed with your tax dollars.
-
- If that is not bad enough, your tax dollars have also
helped China to block the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation website because
it contains references to rights and democracy.
-
- The Trudeau Foundation, which awards scholarships to
human rights and social justice students, has not had one Chinese internet
user visit it over the past year.
-
- Among the multinational corporations helping the communist
regime block websites and build the so called "Great Firewall of China"
is Nortel Networks, a frequent recipient of Ottawa's largesse - the latest
of which is a waiver on a $750 million Canadian taxpayer-backed financing
agreement.
-
- Nortel's Tina Warren said the technology sold to China
is no different than what it sells elsewhere.
-
- It is "intended to enable citizens of the world
to improve their access to communications for the collective sharing of
knowledge that can improve the world around us," she said.
-
- "Nortel's position on this is criminal from a moral
perspective..it is absolutely scandalous," lawyer Clive Ansley, a
Vancouver Island-based expert on Chinese legal issues, told The Asian Pacific
Post.
-
- "What this company is doing is basically telling
China that we at Nortel can help you track down activists and free speech
advocates," said Ansley, a former professor of Chinese studies and
Chinese law in Canada, who was the first foreign lawyer to open a law office
in Shanghai.
-
- "Instead of implementing laws to control the export
of such technology that results in scores being rounded up, jailed and
even killed, the Liberal government has been handing out tax dollars to
companies like Nortel.
-
- "This is indicative of the close links the Liberals
have with China's trade and corporate community and human rights is not
part of the deal.
-
- "The Liberal government believes that this process
of engagement which leads to millions of tax dollars going to China will
help the communist regime become more democratic and respect human rights.
-
- "That is like trying to teach a tiger to be a vegetarian,"
said Ansley, who spent the last 20 years in China and Taiwan.
-
- "Ansley and other human right advocates, including
Erping Zhang from the Association for Asian Research and Harry Wu of the
Laogai (China's prison work camps) Research Foundation recently concluded
a speaking tour of Denmark, Sweden and Norway where they presented papers
at parliaments and universities on China's crackdown on dissidents.
-
- In a telephone interview with The Asian Pacific Post
from New York, Erping Zhang said
-
- the US $800-million Golden Shield project put all Chinese
Internet surfers at risk, as they are being monitored live by over 30,000
cyber cops.
-
- "China is the only country on earth that has crafted
the so-called "cyber crime", and at least over 100 cyber dissidents
are now serving either labor camps or jail terms in China," said Zhang.
-
- "This Golden Shield project developed by some Western
IT companies including Nortel will serve as a tool of suppression by Beijing
to control the Chinese people - this is not just a legal issue, but also
a moral matter.
-
- "Would Western companies today help Nazi Germany
or Saddam's regime with similar technology to monitor their peoples?....I
wish to remind those foreign IT companies like Nortel who are involved
in constructing this Golden Shield project: If you think that your contribution
to this Golden Shield project is harmless, why don't you give up your foreign
passports and live like those ordinary Chinese people in China?
-
- "How would you feel if China is doing this Golden
Shield project in your own homeland," he said.
-
- Zhang urged Canadian lawmakers to ban technology transfer
that helps suppress people of other countries.
-
- Darrel Stinson, the Conservative MP for Okanagan Shuswap
said companies like Nortel cannot just say their technology is neutral
and not be responsible about how it is used.
-
- "Unlike the Liberals, a Conservative government
will try to ensure that tax dollars do not end up as capital for human
rights violations," he said.
-
- Canadian researcher Greg Walton, whose ground breaking
work on China's Golden Shield shed light on Nortel's connection to the
sinister program said the company's technology helps China track individual
internet users at homes, in cybercafes and in universities and businesses.
-
- In a report published by the Montreal-based International
Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Walton disclosed that
Nortel's "Personal Internet" suite program has greatly enhanced
the ability of Internet service providers to track the communications of
almost half of China's individual Internet users.
-
- He pointed out that Nortel's privacy statement for the
Internet, which states it will not sell, rent or share personal data with
any other organization, appears at odds with its work in China.
-
- Former Liberal cabinet minister Warren Allmand, president
of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development,
in a statement following Walton's report said: "Many companies, including
notably Nortel Networks, until recently Canada's largest firm, are playing
key roles in meeting the security needs of the Chinese government."
-
- Other companies helping Beijing develop the Golden Shield
include Sun Microsystems and Cisco Sytems.
-
- Amnesty International, whose website is blocked in China
states that as of January, 7 2004, it had recorded the names of 54 people
who had been detained or imprisoned for disseminating their beliefs or
information through the Internet ñ a 60 per cent increase as compared
to figures recorded at the end of 2002. Prison sentences ranged from two
to 12 years
-
- Those detained for downloading information from the Internet,
expressing their opinions or circulating information on the Internet or
by email include students, political dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners,
workers, writers, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, former police officers,
engineers, and businessmen.
-
- China has also ordered all 110,000 internet cafes in
the country to now use a particular form of software that will control
access to websites considered harmful or subversive - including those of
Amnesty itself, other international human rights groups, news and non-governmental
organizations,
-
- A study by Harvard University's Berkman Center on 204,012
distinct websites said as many as many as one in 10 websites, are being
deliberately blocked to users in China.
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- ©2004 The Asian Pacific Post. All rights reserved.
http://www.asianpacificpost.com/news/article/136.html
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