News: US company’s collaboration with Chinese courts highlighted in Jiang Lijun case

Reporters Without Borders has obtained a copy of the verdict in
the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison in November
2003 for his online pro-democracy articles, showing that Yahoo! helped
Chinese police to identify him.

It is the third such case, following those of Shi Tao and Li Zhi,
proving the implication of the American Internet company.

The verdict, made available and translated into English by the human
rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, can be downloaded from the
Reporters Without Borders’ website.

"Little by little we are piecing together the evidence for what
we have long suspected, that Yahoo! is implicated in the arrest of
most of the people that we have been defending," the press freedom
organisation said.

"Last week we went to the headquarters of the company to urge them
to end this collaboration. We called on them to remove their email
servers from China, because it is the only way to avoid taking part in
the current crackdown against journalists and democrats."

"We hope this Internet giant will not, as it has each time it has
been challenged previously, hide behind its local partner, Alibaba, to
justify its behaviour. Whatever contract it has with this partner, the
email service is marketed as Yahoo!" the organisation said.

According to the verdict, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) confirmed that
the email account ZYMZd2002 had been used jointly by Jiang Lijun and
another pro-democracy activist, Li Yibing.<!–
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\n
\nIn a paragraph headed "physical and written evidence", it says\nthat a "declaration" dated  25 September 2002 had been found\nin the email draft folder, without specifying if this information had\nbeen provided by the California-based company.
\nThe access code could also have been provided by Li Yibing, who is\nsuspected of having been a police informer in the case.
\n
\nJiang Lijun, 40, was sentenced to four years in prison for\n"subversion" on 18 November 2003, accused of seeking to use\n"violent means" to impose democracy. Police believed him to be the\nleader of a small group of cyberdissidents, which included the young\nInternet-user Liu Di. She was imprisoned between November 2002 and\nNovember 2003.
\n
\nThe verdict indicated that Jiang Lijun wrote that the Chinese regime\nwas "autocratic", that he favoured a "so-called western-style\ndemocracy" and planned to set up a political party. It also said\nthat he planned to disrupt the 16th Communist Party Congress by\nphoning the police with a false bomb alert.
\n
\nA Reporters Without Borders\’ team went to Yahoo! headquarters in\nCalifornia on 7 April 2006 to show them videotape in which the brother\nof Li Zhi and the lawyer for Shi Tao exposed the US firm\’s\ncollaboration with the Chinese police (See:\nhttp://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article\u003d16999).
\n
\nThe organisation\’s activists previously approached Yahoo! staff\nleaving its offices to show them the tapes. They then tried to meet\nthe firm\’s executives, who at first refused to see them and\nthreatened to call the police. They finally agreed to a meeting, on 10\nApril, but this encounter did not produce any concrete\nresults.