Censorship in China


Recent developments


Google

Efforts by activists and concerned internet users to hold these companies accountable for censorship are continuing to show results! On the heels of Amnesty's letter writing campaign to Google and Tony Cruz's participation at the annual shareholder meeting, Google Co-founder Sergey Brin has publicly announced that the company compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. According to news reports, on June 6, 2006, Brin stated that Google is considering reversing its course if it cannot improve its censored search engine, Google.cn, in a way that would "provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference."

Brin was quoted as saying, "Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," and "It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path."

Amnesty International applauds Brin's support of a "principled approach" and a reconsideration of Google's decision to cooperate with state censorship in China. Although we have not called on Google to cease operations in China, we have urged the company to put pressure on the Chinese government to allow Chinese citizens free access to information online, and look forward to hearing of more concrete steps by the internet giant to support the rights of Chinese citizens and to oppose censorship around the world.   

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Microsoft
Microsoft also responded to our public call to action, first by posting a message on the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, and a month later, in a formal letter to Amnesty International. Many activists also received a similar letter in response to taking our online action. We take issue with the claims Microsoft makes in these responses, as explained below and in this follow up letter from Irene Khan to Bill Gates. A more detailed explanation can be found in the full-length report, Undermining Freedom of Expression in China: the role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google.
  • Did you receive a response from Microsoft? Use this sample letter to follow up and keep the pressure on them!
China's self censorship pledge
In their response, Microsoft claims to not be a signatory to the Public Pledge of Self Regulation for the Chinese Internet industry, which is a voluntary pledge. In earlier communications, Amnesty International stated that Microsoft had signed China’s self-censorship pledge. If we were incorrect in our information, we apologize unreservedly for this mistake. However, whether Microsoft has signed China’s self-censorship pledge or not, the case of Michael Anti raises the question whether Microsoft will nevertheless respond to requests from the government to shut down blogs, or censor information in any other ways, therefore risking complicity with the Chinese government in violating human rights. Microsoft should provide clear evidence of what laws Michael Anti broke and on the basis of what laws the company shut down his blog.

MSN searches engines
Microsoft also claimed that their "MSN search engine in China (currently in beta), does not block searches for particular key words, including "democracy," "freedom," "human rights," and the like. Users ...do receive search results when these keywords are entered, although users who click on these results may find that certain pages are inaccessible due to gateway-level blocking. MSN Search has no role in such gateway-level blocking."

Findings by Amnesty International in June 2006 show that that Microsoft does filter the results of searches for politically sensitive terms. In doing a search on beta.search.msn.com.cn for a term such as "Tiananmen Square," a page came up stating "Certain content was removed from the results of this search". We consider this operation censorship.

MSN blogs
Finally, Microsoft claims that "Users of MSN Spaces in China are not prohibited from using the words "democracy," "freedom," or "human rights" in blog titles or blog content. Indeed, MSN Spaces does not filter blog content in any way."

Although it appears that MSN Spaces users are not prohibited now from using words like "democracy", "freedom", or "human rights" when creating blogs, as they were when Microsoft launched MSN spaces in China in 2005, recent tests carried out in June 2006 demonstrated the continuing blocking of certain words and terms including "Tiananmen incident" in the title of blogs.

As the list of censored key words appears to have undergone changes, Microsoft should report publicly the list of all words banned at any particular time.

Although we agree with Microsoft that the availability of internet services provided has the potential to increase the ability of Chinese people to engage in free expression, this cannot come at the price of human rights violations. Internet companies have a clear responsibility to avoid playing any role that might support the Chinese government in restricting the fulfillment of human rights.

Keep the pressure on Yahoo, Microsoft and Google and help undermine censorship. Take action now. »