Owen Gibson

Wednesday January 28, 2004

Human rights group Amnesty International has attacked Microsoft and other computer giants for selling technology which allows Chinese authorities to control and monitor the internet, leading to a huge rise in the number of people detained for using the web.

While the Chinese authorities allow access to the web, the regime continues to censor sites that promote dissident views.

According to today's report from Amnesty, 54 people are now detained or imprisoned in China for internet-related activities, a rise of 60% in just over a year.

The report hits out at companies such as Microsoft, the US software giant whose founder Bill Gates learned yesterday that he would receive an honorary knighthood for "services to enterprise", for facilitating the monitoring and control of websites.

"All those detained for expressing peaceful opinions online are prisoners of conscience and should be released immediately and unconditionally," said the director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen.

"We also urge companies which have provided technology which might support this kind of surveillance and harassment to use their influence with the Chinese authorities.

"They should ask the Chinese government to permit freedom of expression and to release all those detained for internet-related offences in violation of their fundamental human rights," she added.

Other western companies named in the report include Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Websense and Sun Microsystems. Amnesty said it was "concerned that by selling such technologies the companies did not give adequate consideration to the human rights implications of their investments".

Those imprisoned for internet-related offences have been accused of a variety of crimes including signing online petitions, calling for reform and an end to corruption, planning to set up a pro-democracy party, communicating with groups abroad and calling for a review of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protestors.

Others have been imprisoned after being accused of spreading "rumours" about the severity of the Sars virus and protesting against the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

For example, academic He Depu was prosecuted for "incitement to subvert state power" in October last year after publishing pro-democracy articles on the web and sent to prison for eight years.

Last year the Chinese authorities hit the headlines when they blocked access to search engine Google in a media clampdown ahead of the watershed 16th Party Congress, when President Jiang Zemin handed power to a new generation of leaders

Access to Google was blocked for two weeks when a link on the site was discovered to lead to a game called 'Slap the evil dictator Jiang Zemin'. Access was later restored, but with certain links blocked.

The BBC, which has had its site blocked in China for some time, drew attention to the growing problem last year when it disclosed that its World Service site in Vietnam had also been censored by the authorities.

China has the fastest growing internet community in the world, presenting the authorities with an ever growing problem in trying to control its expansion. According to official statistics there were 79.5 million internet users in China by December 2003, a rise of 34.5% in the past year.