The internet company Yahoo! has come under attack from an international press watchdog for supplying information to the Chinese Government that directly led to a journalist being jailed for ten years.
Shi Tao, a journalist from Hunan province, was jailed in April for “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities”. He was accused of having e-mailed a pro-democracy activist in New York details of a government order barring Chinese media from marking the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has published a translation of the court’s verdict which showed that Yahoo!’s Hong Kong subsidiary had provided Chinese investigators with the detailed technical information that allowed them to prove that only Shi could have sent the e-mail in question.
“We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the organisation said.
From The Times. (Hat Tip: AL)
