p2pnet news | Freedom:- With the Beijing Olympics on the horizon, Yahoo wants US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to, “help win the release” of pro-democracy dissidents Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, each jailed for ten years after Yahoo handed Chinese authorities and records which led to the men’s original imprisonment.

Rice is on her way to China next week and Yahoo boss Jerry Yang (right), “asked that she ‘actively pursue’ the freedom of Shi Tao, a business journalist who was arrested in November 2004, and Wang Xiaoning, an editor who was arrested in September 2002,” says the Mercury News.

So is Yahoo now set to fully assume its responsibilities as a good corporate citizen?

Well ……….

“I am writing to urge your assistance in alleviating the plight of political dissidents who have expressed their views over the Internet in China,” says Yang in a letter to Rice, adding …

“… and in addressing the related challenges confronting U.S. companies like Yahoo that invest in global markets.”

It’s taken a very long time, “but Yahoo has finally been forced to do something for two Chinese cyber dissidents thrown into jail for 10 years after Yahoo supplied information about them to the Chinese police,” said p2pnet last November, going on:

“Yahoo has continually denied responsibility, trying to claim it only turned over emails to comply with Chinese law.”

The story continued:

CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan had to apologise to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee for not fully informing the panel about the case”.

But they said they hadn’t lied.

“Gao Qinsheng, the mother of jailed journalist Shi Tao, and Yu Lin, married to imprisoned cyber-dissident Wang Xiaoning, “spoke passionately” to the committee about Yahoo’s conduct,” said the Wall Street Journal, quoting Gao as saying, stating

“I am very happy that I saw and I heard the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and other congressmen criticize and condemn Yahoo for having lied to the Congress.”

Now the company will have to provide legal and financial support to the families of the jailed Chinese dissidents, “to settle claims it committed human rights abuses when it gave China information that led to the men’s arrests,” says Bloomberg News …”

Yang was not CEO at the time of the arrests of Shi and Wang, says the Mercury News.

Nor is it alone in consistently putting shareholder interests before those of the people who keep it in huge profits.

“Colin Maclay, managing director for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, called Yang’s letter ‘very genuine’,” says the story.

“They went to China early and didn’t think it through,” he said. Now, Maclay added, “I believe the CEO, and the organization, is committed to doing the right thing.”

He and other academics, as well as human rights activists, are working with Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, United Kingdom-based mobile phone company Vodafone Group and investment groups to develop a code of conduct for operating in countries that censor Internet activity.

Stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Mercury News - Yahoo CEO Yang asks Rice to help win release of 2 journalists in China, February 22, 2008
p2pnet - Yahoo must help jailed dissidents’ families, November 13, 2007

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 10:21 am and is filed under Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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