25 May 2011 | minipost, News and features
A federal lawsuit filed last Thursday against Cisco Systems claims the computer networking company helped design the controversial “Golden Shield” firewall used by the Chinese government to censor the internet and monitor dissidents, such as members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that is banned in China. Several Falun Gong members have been apprehended by Chinese officials, arrested, tortured, and at least one member was beaten to death. Another is missing and presumed dead.
The lawsuit was filed by The Human Rights Law Foundation on behalf of members of Falun Gong via the Alien Torts Statute, a federal law that permits foreign nationals to sue for violations of international law in the United States federal court. Charges have also been brought under the Torture Victim Protection Act. The 52-page suit contains a marketing slide revealing the goal of the Golden Shield to “douzheng” or persecute Falun Gong and other cults.
The company denied the allegations, stating, “Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customise our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression.”
25 May 2011 | Uncategorized
Remember how the great press barons turned nations against each other and then pocketed tidy profits, not only from newspaper sales but also from arms deals on the side? Compare the behaviour of old and new media giants like News International and Twitter over the last few days. They have propagated the idea that free speech and privacy are at war with each other. The media’s coverage of privacy injunctions has developed this shaky idea into the status of a truth universally acknowledged. (more…)
24 May 2011 | News and features
US view: The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jillian York and Cindy Cohn examine the Ryan Giggs affair
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24 May 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China
Journalist Song Zhibiao has been suspended by the Southern Metropolis Daily for writing an editorial remembering the Sichuan earthquake, referring also to the dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
The Chinese editorial not only referred to Ai Weiwei’s installations, such as the sunflower seeds in London’s Tate Modern, but also his campaign to find out numbers and names of schoolchildren who had died in the earthquake in 2008, a task handled without transparency by the government.
Deutsche Welle, a German newspaper known for its international output, reported that a member of the editorial team at SMD sent a microblog on Sina:
[Song Zhibiao] is temporarily being suspended. Unfortunately it will be a good long while before he can write another editorial or comment article.
The same DW report said that it might be a case of self-censorship as the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda chiefs Li Changchun and Liu Yunshan are to visit Guangdong province, where the Southern Media Group is based.
The paper wanted to make sure that nothing could implicate them in a crackdown. The same report quoted a journalist at the paper, who said they are working in very sensitive times.
An editorial employee told UNCUT today that Song is not taking interviews, but biding his time whilst a self-criticism that has been submitted to the provincial propaganda department is passed. Once that is over, the exact terms of the suspension, or punishment, will become clear.
Last week the Chinese government announced that Ai Weiwei’s company Fake evaded huge amounts of tax as well as destroyed accounting documents. Ai Weiwei’s sentence for the so-called crime has not yet been delivered and his four friends and employees remain missing.
