02-07-2004, 05:39 PM
|
#1 (permalink)
|
|
who?
Location: the phoenix metro
|
pissed that your isp closed the ports to your p2p?
quit your bitching and read:
Quote:
China tightens net around online dissenters
30,000 web police are thought to be monitoring chatrooms and sites
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Saturday February 7, 2004
The Guardian
The man shadowing the internet activists on the street was either spectacularly incompetent or deliberately trying to intimidate. Each time they stopped, he stopped. When they ate at a restaurant, he waited outside. When they doubled back on themselves, he gazed down at his shoes until they walked past and then continued following them.
The sight of the public security agent clumsily pursuing three students, a monk and an old woman was almost comically out of step with the times. But there was nothing funny about the risks they were taking. Ducking into a tatty old dormitory in one of Beijing's most prestigious universities, the activists got to work on a project that could have led to their arrest and imprisonment.
In a tiny student room, one of them had connected three computers and linked them to the internet. From here they run a weekly chatroom for the most talked-about - and sometimes politically sensitive - issues of the day.
On this occasion, they were taking their greatest risk yet by inviting 77-year-old Gao Yaojie, a prominent Aids campaigner who is under constant government surveillance, to discuss the HIV epidemic caused by a state-backed blood collection policy.
While one of the students acted as the host, another fielded email questions, and the third worked full-time to fight off attacks on their server.
They don't know where the attacks are coming from, but they suspect the government. It is reminiscent of the days of pirate radio stations.
"We just want people to talk and think about important issues facing China," said the 23-year-old technician. "It's not illegal in any way, but there are people in authority who don't like what we do. They would like to bring our system down."
As an Amnesty report revealed this week, the Chinese government is using an increasingly heavy hand to try to silence the growing whispers of opposition on the web. The group says 54 people had been arrested for disseminating their beliefs through the internet by December - a 60% increase on the previous year.
Their alleged crimes include organising online political petitions, proselytising for the outlawed Falun Gong movement, and spreading "rumours" about Aids and Sars. They face sentences of between two and 12 years in prison. Four have died in detention and there are reports of torture.
In part, the increase in arrests reflects the explosive growth of internet use in China, where the number of surfers rose by 32% last year to 78 million. But it also reflects the government's quandary in trying to promote the economic, modernising side of the web, while suppressing its political and subversive nature.
The flexible boundary between what is permissible and what is prohibited was all too apparent in the case of Liu Di, a 23-year-old student who went by the alias Stainless Steel Mouse.
After posting several essays online criticising government control of the internet, she received a warning from her college tutors: "People in high places have told us that you hold radical views. Stop what you are doing."
A month later, she was arrested and held without trial. "The way I was treated was absurd," Ms Liu told the Guardian, after a huge outcry in China and abroad secured her release.
"I was in prison for a year, but they didn't show me a single piece of evidence regarding the crime I was suspected of committing."
"I write in a more roundabout way now," she says. "It's like a game. One word can be totally illegal, but you can get away with alternative phrases that mean almost exactly the same thing."
Like many members of China's online community, Ms Liu believes the government has established an "internet police" - rumoured to be 30,000 strong - which monitors websites and chatrooms. This has never been confirmed, but the authorities have certainly developed technology to block access to some websites, such as those of the BBC and Amnesty International. Even search engines can be filtered so that no results are returned for certain searches, such as "Falun Gong".
Internet cafes and internet service providers are also under increasing pressure to join the government crackdown. The police have told Netbar, an internet cafe with more than 100 computers in central Beijing, to keep a record of the names and identification numbers of every user, as well as a record of every site visited in the previous 60 days.
The cafe, owned by a subsidiary of the internet giant Yahoo, has complied with the censorship to the point of installing site-blocking software.
Many foreign hi-tech companies have been accused of sacrificing principle for profit by colluding with the Chinese government's efforts to restrict access.
Last month, Reporters Without Borders appealed to the chief executives of 14 technology multinationals to put pressure on Beijing to lift internet censorship and free jailed internet dissidents.
Web solidarity
But the list of prisoners is growing. Some have been detained for expressing democratic views, such as the "New Youth Association". Its four members, Jin Haike, Xu Wei, Zhang Honghai and Yang Zili, were sentenced to more than eight years after their arrest last May.
In many other cases, the authorities have given no justification for taking internet activists into custody. The tough measures sometimes seem aimed simply at breaking up any sense of web solidarity.
Du Daobin was arrested in October shortly after he started a petition calling for the release of Stainless Steel Mouse.
"He left for work, but never came back," said Mr Du's wife, Xia Chunrong. "Two days later, the police searched our house and took our computer. I haven't been allowed to see him since."
Three months on, she has not been told whether he will stand trial. "If he did something illegal, they should at least let the public know and let the people judge," she says.
Unfortunately, that appears to be exactly the opposite of the intention of those who seek to clamp down on the internet.
|
so our own thought police aren't quite there yet, but do you think that the growing idealogies of those in our government could one day lead to these kinds of happenings in our own country?
__________________
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
- Thomas Paine
|
|
|
