Internet giant Yahoo! supplied information to the Chinese government that led to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao for 10 years, international watchdog Reporters sans Frontières said on Wednesday.
The California-based company’s Hong Kong subsidiary gave details to China’s state security, which helped to identify and convict Shi (37) the group said. Shi was sentenced in April for ”leaking state secrets”.
He posted on the internet a government order barring Chinese media from marking the 15th anniversary last year of the brutal 1989 crackdown on democracy activists at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Yahoo! Hong Kong provided Chinese investigators with detailed information that apparently enabled them to link Shi’s personal e-mail account and the specific message he sent to the IP address of his computer, the group said.
The Paris-based watchdog cited the text of the verdict in the trial. A spokesperson at Yahoo!’s Hong Kong office told French news agency AFP the company did not have an immediate comment.
”We’re looking into this matter,” she said.
Yahoo!, along with Google and Microsoft, have been accused of putting business ahead of integrity by succumbing to China’s pressure and censoring sensitive information on its Chinese search engines, websites and blogs.
The three portals are battling for a share of China’s fast growing internet market, which grew 18,4% year-on-year in the first half to 103-million users by the end of June.
It makes China the second largest internet user in the world after the United States.
Last month, Yahoo! agreed to buy 40% of China’s Alibaba.com for $1-billion in cash, the biggest investment by a foreign company in China’s internet sector.
The company, however, has been accused of allowing the Chinese version of its search engine to be censored for years.
In 2002, Yahoo! voluntarily signed the ”Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the China Internet Industry,” agreeing to abide by Chinese censorship regulations.
Searches deemed sensitive by the Chinese government, such as the 1989 massacre ”June 4th” and the outlawed spiritual group ”Falungong” in the Yahoo! China search engine retrieved no results on Wednesday.
Shi’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. – AFP
