Censorship in China
- Overview
- Companies Implicated in Abuses
- Business standards in China
- Public pressure increases
- Shareholder activism
- Recent developments
- Take action
- Additional resources
Hong Kong Democratic Party activists shout slogans and hold a banner, as they prepare to hand in a petition to the Hong Kong Yahoo! office's representative. They condemned the company for passing on information that led to the jailing of Shi Tao, a journalist in China – jailed for 10 years for "illegally divulging state secrets abroad." PHOTO © AFP
Overview
As China's burgeoning economy grows and with its admission in December 2001 to the World Trade Organization (WTO), foreign ownership, investment and involvement of foreign companies in China's information and telecommunications industries has soared. This growth is not without complications. In China, Amnesty International is concerned that in their pursuit of new and lucrative markets, foreign corporations may be directly or indirectly contributing to human rights violations or at the very least failing to give adequate consideration to the human rights implications of their investments. Of particular concern are abuses of the right to freedom of expression and information. More recently concerns tied to privacy issues have also arisen.
Amnesty International first reported on the issue of freedom of expression and information in November 2002. In the report State control of the Internet in China, Amnesty cited several foreign companies - Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Websense and Sun Microsystems - which had reportedly provided technology used to censor and control the use of the Internet in China. Following the publication of the report, several companies dismissed allegations that their company's actions might be contributing to human rights violations in China. Cisco Systems denied that the company tailors its products for the Chinese market, saying that "[I]f the government of China wants to monitor the Internet, that's their business. We are basically politically neutral." Microsoft said it "focused on delivering the best technology to people throughout the world", but that it "cannot control the way it may ultimately be used."
Amnesty International considers such responses to be inadequate, particularly in view of recent measures taken at the international level to hold companies more accountable for the human rights implications of their investments, such as the UN Norms for Business on Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, adopted by the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in 2003.
In January 2004 Amnesty released an updated report, Controls tighten as Internet activism grows, which indicated that there was a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for Internet-related offences, an increase of 60 per cent in 2003 as compared to the previous year's figures. In addition, an unknown number of people remained in detention for disseminating information about the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) over the Internet. Nearly all of the individuals cited in the 2004 report are still considered to be prisoners of conscience. Many have been denied due process and some have been tortured or ill-treated in custody.
In July 2006, Amnesty published further research on the role of US Internet companies in the report, Undermining of Freedom of Expression in China. The report focuses on Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google's cooperation with the Chinese government's censorship of search engines and email, web and blog content. We presented these findings and our ongoing concerns about company involvement in online censorship at the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens, Greece in November 2006.
Amnesty International's Dr. Daniel McQuillan presents the Irrepressible.info campaign's petition to Nitin Desai, U.N. Secretary's Special Reporter on Internet Governance. © Nicolas Kominis
Government, corporate and civil society delegates from around the world attended the Forum to discuss a wide range of issues, including the protection of human rights on the Internet. When Amnesty raised the issue of threats to freedom of expression and privacy, a Chinese government delegate stated that there is no censorship in China, and that the few journalists who are serving sentences there are imprisoned because they are criminals. We strongly disagree. Likewise, many companies, including Microsoft, Cisco and Google, were also present, and took defensive positions regarding their operations in China and other restrictive countries.
At the IGF, Amnesty presented its research on human rights violations relating to activity on the Internet and continued to press governments and companies to uphold their obligations to promote and respect these most fundamental rights. We also presented the chairman of the Forum with the signatures of 50,000 people who have taken our irrepressible.info pledge to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet.
In January 2007, Amnesty joined a multi-stakeholder initiative with academics, socially responsible investment firms, other experts and companies including Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! to develop a set of voluntary principles to promote and respect human rights on the Internet. Amnesty welcomes the companies' commitment to the initiative and hopes that our participation in it will help establish a strong set of human rights principles for the industry. Additionally, we continue to support legislative efforts like the Global Online Freedom Act, as the companies' current and past practices remain of serious concern.
