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China's Tibet spin control extends to western web portals |
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Written by Clifford Coonan
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Monday, 24 March 2008 |
CHINA -- The Beijing government has released "most wanted" photographs of
suspects captured on film during the recent riots in Tibet and the
images were carried on Chinese versions of websites Yahoo! and MSN,
prompting further criticism of the role of international webcos in
assisting in tracking down dissidents.
The "most wanted" also ran on Chinese portals such as Sina.com and news.qq.com
and features pictures of the suspects and a hotline for informants to
call. Of the 24 named in the manhunt list, two have already been caught.
These sites have naturally not come under the widening of restrictions
on Internet use in China this week, which has played havoc with
webizens ability to access email, as well as completely shutting down
sites related to the Tibetan riots of last week, in which an unknown
number of people were killed.
Nasdaq-listed Yahoo owns 40% of Alibaba, which operates Yahoo! China.
The company has been criticised before for helping the Chinese
government control dissent after it was revealed that the company
helped the Chinese police in its inquiry over the journalist Shi Tao.
Material from his Yahoo! email account was used in his trial and he
sentenced to ten years in prison in 2005 for "divulging state secrets."
It subsequently emerged that Yahoo! had provided evidence against other
Chinese dissidents. Foreign webcos defend their cooperation with the
Chinese government by saying that it is better to have some censorship
than no presence whatsoever in the world's biggest Internet market.
In November, Congress' House Foreign Affairs Committee was critical of
Yahoo!'s role in helping the Chinese jail dissidents. Yahoo! said its
operation in China was handled by Alibaba.
"It
beggars belief that Yahoo! is acting as China's right-hand man in its
brutal crackdown on Tibetan protesters," said Free Tibet campaign
director Matt Whitticase. "Yahoo! knows very well that these protesters
will have no access to legal representation and that either execution
or long prison sentences and torture awaits any protester arrested in
Lhasa. Free Tibet Campaign calls on all Yahoo! subscribers to cancel
immediately their accounts."
There are reports that bloggers in China have been told by Internet
watchdog that they face arrest and "appropriate action" if they discuss
the Tibetan riots.
After
days of official statements that no lethal force had been used to quell
unrest, official news agency Xinhua reported that four people had been
shot and wounded in southwestern Sichuan province after police opened
fire in self-defence.
China has focused on the attacks on ethnic Han Chinese settlers during
the riots and sees the demonstrations as pure vandalism aimed at
kicking the Chinese out of Tibet. The official line is that 13 innocent
civilians were killed by Tibetan "mobs". Tibetan groups say the number
is around 100.
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 25 March 2008 )
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