Just Following Orders in China(Max Boot exposes Chinese human rights abuses)

The Los Angeles Times ^ | September 14, 2005 | Max Boot

[kellynla]

IMAGINE WHAT would have happened if during the 1980s an American communications company had provided information that allowed the South African government to track down and imprison an anti-apartheid activist. That is pretty much the moral equivalent of what Yahoo has just done in China in the case of journalist Shi Tao. And the California-based Web giant deserves the same kind of public opprobrium that would have fallen on any Western firm that dared to publicly cooperate with the enforcers of apartheid.

Shi, the victim of Yahoo's shameful behavior, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "illegally sending state secrets abroad." Shi was a reporter for a Chinese newspaper, Contemporary Business News. His crime consisted of e-mailing to a New York-based website information about a supposedly secret directive his newspaper had received from the state propaganda department telling it how to cover the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The security services were able to track him down thanks to information helpfully provided by Yahoo's Hong Kong affiliate, whose e-mail service Shi used.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang breezily defended his company's role: "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law." I wonder how far Yang would take that logic. What if local law required Yahoo to cooperate in strictly separating races? Or the rounding up and extermination of a certain race? Or the stoning of homosexuals? Would Yang eagerly do the government's bidding in those cases too?

[kellynla]

"The conduct of Yahoo et al should be illegal. The Commerce Department, and if necessary Congress, should forbid American firms from facilitating human rights abuses in China."

[Willie Green]

The Commerce Department, and if necessary Congress, should forbid American firms from facilitating human rights abuses in China.

The "free trade uber alles" crowd ain't gonna like that one bit.

[kellynla]

And the next time you start to purchase a MADE IN CHINA product you might want to keep this picture in mind.
WARNING! Very graphic!

http://pekingduck.org/archives/shot.jpg

Some of the Chicoms "handiwork."

[djl_sa]

It's an open market... I think the consumers should make Yahoo pay.... I'll do my part by moving off of my.yahoo.com as a home page.

[sarasota]

Reminds me of the CNN Baghdad bureau which stiffled information related to the Butcher of Baghdad before the rest of the world revealed his savagery. Only following "local law", you know.

[kellynla]

"Reminds me of the CNN Baghdad bureau which stiffled information related to the Butcher of Baghdad before the rest of the world revealed his savagery. Only following "local law", you know."

Exactly!
And the Nazis in WWII(just following orders!)

Who was the CNN reporter(been around forever) I can't remember his name who failed to report the Butcher of Baghdad's handiwork!

[kellynla]

Peter Arnett was who I was thinking of.

[sarasota]

I think it was Arnett. Our media is beyond pathetic.

[phillyfanatic]

Last night, my wife and I came across CCTV, a hugely propagnistic satellite channel talking about the NEW CHINA. That was the description by a smirking, unctious white European narrator when talking about how 1949 was the great move for freedom for China in the production of shipping, industry and farming. Not a word about communism. Not a word about murders of 30 million peasants in the Civil War. Not a word about the threat of foreign policy, war build up. This channel simply puts forward the best front on China and my guess is that some Americans watching this will be convinced that the NEW CHINA is really just a nice civil competitor.

[sarasota]

I'm afraid that's what most Americans already think. Cheap prices mean more than value--moral and financial.