Amnesty: we must free the internet

Human rights group reunites with The Observer to end repression online

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A historic partnership is revived today as The Observer and Amnesty International launch a major campaign to take a stand on basic civil liberties, 45 years after a clarion call in this newspaper led to the launch of the organisation.



It is a move that has already sparked controversy as companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft say their decisions to enter restricted countries such as China are for the good of the local population. It is better to provide most of the information than none, they argue.

But to Allen they are aiding repressive governments: 'The internet is a huge, powerful tool. We see governments censoring access to the internet or locking people up for having conversations about democracy and freedom.'

The clearest example may be China, but Amnesty International has uncovered internet repression across the world from Tunisia, Vietnam and the Maldives to Israel and Iran.

It was an article in this newspaper in 1961 by Peter Benenson that launched the huge movement that became Amnesty International. He had been enraged about two Portuguese students being arrested for raising a toast to freedom. Forty-five years on, the organisation he founded is fighting against the arrest of three Vietnamese people for taking part in a chatroom about democracy.

Today, tens of thousands of internet police are on the march across the world. In some countries they have cameras in internet cafes to track political dissidents.

Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, was sentenced to 10 years' hard labour for using the internet to tell people newspapers were being restricted in their coverage of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests. Yahoo gave information to the authorities that was used in evidence for his conviction.

People are living in fear, according to Xu Wenli, head of the Overseas Exiles branch of the Chinese Democratic Party (CDP), who is known as the 'Godfather of Dissent'.

He signed up to the campaign yesterday: 'We have to use internet cafes instead of home computers. But even then, the Chinese intelligence can track you. There are more than 30,000 internet police.' He lists names of men who are in prison for placing their beliefs online.

There are also more subtle restrictions. Rafal Rohozinski, from the Advanced Network Research Group, University of Cambridge, said: 'In some cases, countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Myanmar are open about their censorship policies. More worrying is the increasing number of countries implementing filtering under obscure national security provisions, or other, hidden extra-legal means. We are seeing an alarming increase in these practices.'

But enterprises were quick to defend their positions. Yahoo was 'distressed' by the case of Shi Tao and had received a 'valid and legal demand for information' under Chinese law and was not told why. Alex Laity, corporate communications manager, said: 'We condemn punishment of any activity internationally recognised as free expression, whether that punishment takes place in China or anywhere else in the world.'

Rachel Whetstone, European head of communications for Google, said the decision to enter China was a result of 'lengthy and heated debate'.

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