Special Focus Cases
Shi Tao, 10 years in prison for sending an email
People's Republic of China
In April 2004, the Chinese journalist Shi Tao used his Yahoo! email account to send a message to a U.S.-based pro-democracy website. In his email, he summarized a government order directing media organizations in China to downplay the upcoming 15th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Police arrested him in November 2004, charging him with "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities." Authorities used email account holder information supplied by Yahoo! to convict Shi Tao in April 2005 and sentence him to 10 years in prison.
China's vaguely-worded legal definition of what constitutes a "state secret" gives authorities broad discretion to detain people who peacefully exercise their right to free expression. In a similar case, authorities arrested government worker Li Zhi in August 2003 for allegedly using email accounts through Yahoo! and another company to make contact with a banned political party.
China has constructed an extensive system of Internet censorship to silence activists and journalists like Shi Tao. All Internet communications pass through government-controlled routers, and authorities are able to block access to many sites, to filter content, and to delete links or web pages considered "dangerous" or "subversive." No list identifying what information is filtered or blocked is publicly available, but a study done by Harvard Law School in 2002 found that more than 50,000 of 204,000 websites tested were inaccessible from at least one location in China. Websites using banned words such as "democracy," "freedom," and "human rights" are regularly blocked, as are the websites of international human rights groups (including Amnesty International) and several foreign news services.
Shi Tao (pronounced "shur taow"), a 39-year-old published poet and essayist, is held at Deshan Prison in Changde, Hunan Province. His family has been harassed by authorities. His wife underwent daily questioning by security officials and was persistently pressured to divorce Shi Tao, which she eventually did. His uncle and brother have been under surveillance and harassed both at work and at home, and his mother is reportedly monitored and harassed as she petitions for his release.
Amnesty International considers Shi Tao to be a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression, a right protected in international law and the Chinese constitution.
China currently has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world. As of July 2006, Amnesty International had documented at least 54 Chinese Internet users believed to be imprisoned for such acts as signing petitions, calling for an end to corruption, disseminating health information, or planning to establish pro-democracy groups. For more information, see Amnesty's report, Undermining Freedom of Expression in China.
The crackdown on Internet users is part of a broader deterioration in China's human rights policies. Government authorities have demonstrated heightened intolerance of public criticism in recent years, resulting in the detention, "disappearance," imprisonment, beating, intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders and others seeking justice.
China is the world leader in executions, with thousands of people sentenced to death and executed each year. The Uighur minority in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region face intensified repression under the guise of China's "war on terror." Freedom of expression and religion continue to be severely restricted in Tibet. Christians not belonging to officially recognized churches must practice their religion underground. Members of banned spiritual groups, including the Falun Gong, face harsh persecution.
