Human rights network releases damning Chinese media report

A Hong Kong human rights networks says China’s heavily-censored internet is the main battleground in the fight for freedom of expression.

The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), a network of activists, detailed a litany of rights abuses in its annual report on the events of 2010. Details on the list of acts committed by the state against campaigners include more than 3 500 cases of arbitrary detention and allegations of torture.

The network called on Beijing to release all rights activists including jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, investigate security personnel accused of rights violations and guarantee free expression and unfettered internet access.

“The fact that Liu is serving an 11-year prison sentence for engaging in peaceful advocacy for human rights and democracy also highlights the severe repression that those engaging in human rights activism can face,” it said.

The 24-page report illustrated how the internet was vital to activists as a tool for spreading information and organising protests but said it was “the principal arena where the battles for freedom of expression were fought” in 2010.

CHRD noted attacks on the websites of activist groups including its own, the shutdown of activist blogs and microblogs, the suspension of its web access and changes to the “state secrets” law that put web campaigners at risk.

It described the internet blackout in China’s far-western Xinjiang region – where deadly ethnic violence erupted in July 2009 – as “the most extensive and protracted electronic communications shutdown in the internet era in China”.

The Chinese government has expended tremendous resources to police the web, blocking anti-government postings and other politically sensitive material with a system known as the “Great Firewall of China“.

Internet censorship in China is among the most stringent in the world, according to the New York Times.

Foreign social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are officially blocked, yet are accessed by some of China’s astonishing 457-million internet users via proxy servers.

Authorities in China have become increasingly nervous about the internet’s power to mobilise ordinary citizens in the wake of unrest in the Arab world, and an anonymous online call for anti-government “Jasmine” rallies at home. China’s censors have now blocked the word ‘jasmine’ and many other perceived codewords of activism from social networks, blogs and news portals

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month renewed a call for global Internet freedom, pointing at China as one of several countries that restrict web access, impose censorship or arrest bloggers who criticise the government.

CHRD condemned restrictions on the right to freedom of association, saying those curbs worsened during “sensitive” periods, such as in the weeks following the announcement of Liu’s Nobel win.

It decried the illegal detention of petitioners seeking redress for alleged wrongdoings at the local level, saying it had documented more than 2 600 cases involving so-called “black jails”.

Hundreds more were subjected to house arrest, short-term detentions by police or “enforced travel” – another term for being forced to leave one’s home at a sensitive period for a number of days as the CHRD explains.

The US announcement of a US$25 million program to promote technology that would allow people to circumvent the internet was blocked on blogs and social media in China. The technology that was not aimed at China in particular resulted in widespread criticism against Obama from the Chinese government. – AFP