Tag archive: Tiananmen Square

In 1989, pro-democracy students, intellectuals, and activists began staging protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, culminating on June when the Chinese government sent in tanks to break up the protests…an action which led to photographer Jeff Widener's world-famous "Tank Man" image of an unknown, unarmed man halting a column of four tanks simply by standing in front of them and refusing to move. The number of… Read More

Prior to the Olympics this summer, there was a furor when foreign journalists complained that the Chinese government was blocking ‘sensitive’ sites. In the spirit of the games, those were opened up. But now, after the outsiders have long gone, the government has re-blocked several of those sites, including the BBC Chinese site and Voice of America in Chinese, the BBC reports. According to a Chinese government spokesman, the… Read More

China, North Korea, Burma…they’re places where protest has been crushed. But yesterday people demonstrated against Net censorship in virtual locations from those countries.  Organized by the group Reporters Without Borders, the first Online Free Expression Day invited people to create avatars and take part in demonstrations in virtuallocations where protest would not be allowed in the real world.   In a statement RWB said,… Read More

Search giant Yahoo was raked over the coals by a Congressional committee panel yesterday for its actions regarding jailed Chinese dissident Shi Tao.   Yahoohad provided details to Chinese authorities that helped them identify the man, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for forwarding an e-mail from the Chinese Communist Party to journalists, warningthem not to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2004, to web… Read More

Although Yahoo has made much of its commitment to individual rights and freedom of expression in the online world, Yahoo shareholders have rejected two motions which would have set up a committee within the company to deal with human rights issues, along with a six-point anti-censorship proposal. At the meeting of approximately 100 shareholders, a proposal from a Napa, California man that the company create a special Committee on Human… Read More

Members of the House International Relations Committee took turns raking representatives of Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and Microsoft over the coals regarding alleged complicity in Chinese human rights abuses and Internet censorship. “Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace,” said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA). “I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.” U.S. Internet firms are caught… Read More