Alicia Burns
Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2004

Amazingly, rather than placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Chinese government, Amnesty accuses American software companies of abetting the Chinese government in its technological human rights abuses.

Amnesty blames Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco, among others, for "indirectly contributing to human rights violations in China" by selling surveillance software to the Chinese government. Apparently, the software helps communist officials censor free speech on the web.

Unfortunately, lumping law-abiding software companies with a repressive communist regime is both sensational and inaccurate.

These cutting-edge companies create hardware and software that enable China's 79.5 million Internet users to communicate with one another and the outside world. Their monitoring software is put to benign use around the globe. China's abuse of this software is not the fault of the software companies, but of the oppressive government regime.

The Chinese government requires its citizens to log on through state-controlled routers in order to restrict them from viewing "subversive" or "dangerous" content. In China, if you search for terms like "Taiwan," "Tibet," "democracy," "dissident," "Falun Gong," and "human rights," your request is denied.

If you persist in such searches, promote online petitions, disseminate pro-democracy information, or raise such taboo subjects as the SARS outbreak, you may find yourself detained or imprisoned.

In a May 2003 report, Reporters Sans Frontieres - a leading free-press advocacy group - investigated Internet use in China by posing as a Chinese Internet user for one month. The report finds that approximately 70 percent of controversial content was suppressed.

The report also describes the "manhunts" that the government uses to track down violators as part of the "Golden Shield" policy, which began in the late 1990s to stifle dissent. It is estimated that 60 laws and regulations exist regarding use of the Internet, and that even well intentioned sites such as Yahoo! are merely "police auxiliaries."

The outlook is not improving. Liu Yuzhu, a Ministry of Culture official, told Amnesty that by 2005, all cafes will be required to install an "Internet cafe technology management system requiring the whole nation to adopt the same standard and each province the same software." The software will help the Ministry of Culture collect data on Internet users and alert authorities when forbidden content is accessed.

Of course, the communist Chinese government does not limit itself to Internet users. The U.S. State Department in its 2003 Annual Report on Human Rights Abuses documented the existence of "re-education through labor camps" where approximately 250,000 citizens are currently detained for allegedly committing crimes against the Communist Party.

Additionally, the country's one child policy leads to forced abortion, forced sterilization and violence against women, according to the State Department. The Population and Family Planning Law passed in 2002 lays out punishment for those who violate the one child policy, while rewarding those who abide by it. Technically, physical coercion is illegal, but it still occurs.

Religious freedom is also restricted, and citizens are allowed to worship only if their religions do not have "foreign contacts" that could subvert government authority. Five religions are recognized: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Islam and Protestantism.

Authorities closely monitor all religiously affiliated groups. And sects such as the Muslim Uighurs, Tibetan Buddhists and underground Christian groups are routinely persecuted. Falun Gong supporters are discriminated against as well.

Instead of providing a world of information and exchange, as optimists had predicted, the Internet is simply the Chinese government's newest tool in suppressing citizen expression. The source of the technology that enables the government to censor its citizens is not the problem; it is the censorship itself.

The technology sold to the Chinese government by companies like Microsoft is sold throughout the world to individuals, business enterprises, and governments that do not misuse, improperly censor, or unfairly detain their citizens.

The American technology companies criticized by Amnesty International do not bear responsibility for the actions of the Chinese regime.

Ms. Burns is a fellow with the Digital Freedom Network in Newark, N.J. She can be reached at a.burns@dfn.org.