Chinese censors target tomatoes amid Bo Xilai scandal
Chongqing hotpot = King of the Southwest = King Who Pacifies the West = Minister of Yu = Tomato
What do these words have in common? They are all coded references to Bo Xilai, the disgraced former Communist Party leader in southwestern Chongqing, and they were all censored in China on Tuesday, according to the Berkeley-based China Digital Times website. Bo was removed from his post in March, and state media reported Wednesday he had been suspended from the governing Politburo and Party Central Committee. Propaganda officials censored speculation about Bo’s downfall and its implications for political stability, so Internet users adopted terms like the ones above to avoid triggering keyword filters. Now these, too, have been blacklisted, according to China Digital Times. Will this senseless battle to hide information ever end?
New Jersey school district bans anthology about teenage homosexuality
American free speech organizations are fighting a decision by a New Jersey school to remove a critically acclaimed anthology of writing about teenage homosexuality from library shelves after parents described it as vulgar and obscene, reports The Guardian.
Revolutionary Voices, a collection of stories, poems and artwork by young homosexuals, was banned at Rancocas Valley Regional High School last week following a campaign by the local chapter of Glenn Beck’s conservative 9.12 project.
Local grandmother and 9.12 member Beverly Marinelli told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the book was “pervasively vulgar, obscene, and inappropriate”, while insisting that she is “not a homophobe”.
A coalition of free speech groups has jumped to the book’s defense, saying that residents “have no right to impose their views on others or to demand that the contents of the library reflect their personal, religious, or moral values”.
Homophobia and censorship in the same breath?
Oh, hell naw!!
Iran has been named an Enemy of the Internet by Reporters Without Borders. Read more about Iran’s censorship policies and download a logo in support of free speech.
The “Enemies of the Internet” list drawn up again this year by Reporters Without Borders presents the worst violators of freedom of expression on the Net: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.
Click through to send a message to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmar (Microsoft CEO), via Amnesty International USA.
China: Microsoft Should Not Undermine Efforts to Combat Censorship
From Human Rights Watch, excerpt:
(Washington, DC) Senior Microsoft officials appear to be downplaying online censorship by the Chinese authorities, Human Rights Watch said today.
Recent public statements by Steve Ballmer, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, and Bill Gates, the company’s chairman and co-founder, appear to contradict the company’s official statement of opposition to such censorship and minimize or even support online censorship in China.
“Microsoft is on the wrong side of this issue,” said Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director for Human Rights Watch. “Just as the US government and a company like Google are starting to push back against censorship, Ballmer and Gates seem to be going the other way. Unless Microsoft clarifies its position, the Chinese government and others will take great comfort in how easy it is for them to divide and co-opt opponents of censorship.”
On January 21, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ballmer told an oil industry conference that, “you have to respect sovereign nations to make that decision [to censor].”
On January 25, Bill Gates reinforced that view and said in an ABC interview that, “The role of the Internet in every country has been very positive, letting people speak out in new ways…[a]nd fortunately the Chinese efforts to censor the Internet have been very limited…it is easy to go around it.” Gates also noted that different countries have different laws on censorship and said that “you have got to decide do you want to obey the laws of the countries you are in or not. If not, you may not end up doing business there.”
China, a country with more than 300 million internet users, devotes enormous resources to support an extensive online censorship regime that includes sophisticated government firewalls and filtering in conjunction with self-censorship by companies who operate search engines, blogs, or other online media.
Thank goodness for Ubuntu.
CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY, responding to remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that criticized China’s censorship of the Internet.
From Time Magazine’s Quotes of the Day
Really, China? Who do you think you’re kidding?
Google: Actions speak louder than words
From Amnesty International’s blog, excerpt:
Many Internet companies operating in China, including Google, have previously complied with the Chinese government’s censorship requirements. And this isn’t the first time that Chinese human rights defenders have been the targeted through their email accounts. Yahoo! handed over Shi Tao’s personal email records to Chinese authorities in 2004 which led to a 10 year prison sentence. He was targeted because of his effort to expose government-endorsed media censorship over the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen. More recently, the Chinese government blocked Twitter, Flickr, and Hotmail prior to the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen in June and attempted to mandate that all PC makers such as Hewlett Packard and Dell install software that filters Internet content.
Foremski also cites a Twitter feed from Guardian reporter Bobbie Johnson – who hits the nail on the head:
Goog [sic] acted after its rights were infringed, not the rights of its users.
That’s why AIUSA pulled out of the Global Network Initiative – a multi-stakeholder initiative – we joined in 2007, with the goal of establishing voluntary principles to promote and respect human rights on the Internet. We saw no tangible results.
We certainly welcome Google’s statements, but actions speak louder than words. And this is the internet company’s opportunity to be a leader. Google should stand with human rights defenders and support the Global Online Freedom Act (H.R. 2271) which could help IT companies resist information requests by the Chinese government.
