A Chinese political prisoner and his wife sued Yahoo in federal court yesterday, accusing the company of abetting the commission of torture by helping Chinese authorities identify political dissidents who were later beaten and imprisoned.
The lawsuit, filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act, is believed to be the first of its kind against an Internet company for its activities in China.
Wang Xiaoning (
"I hope to be able to have Yahoo promise that in the future they will stop this kind of wrongdoing," said Yu, speaking through an interpreter in a telephone interview from San Francisco.
Yahoo said it had not yet seen the lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California, and could not comment on the allegations.
"Companies doing business in China are forced to comply with Chinese law," said Jim Cullinan, a Yahoo spokesman. When government officials present the company with a lawful request for information about a Yahoo user, he said, "Yahoo China will not know whether the demand for information is for a legitimate criminal investigation or is going to be used to prosecute political dissidents."
Several US Internet companies, including Cisco Systems, Google and Microsoft, have been criticized by some politicians and human rights groups, accusing them of helping the government monitor and censor the Internet in China.
Yahoo has come under sharp criticism. Human rights groups say that Yahoo has helped identify at least four people, including the journalist Shi Tao (師濤) in 2004, who have since been imprisoned for voicing dissent in cyberspace.
"Our concern is that Yahoo, as far as we know, is continuing this practice," said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA and a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
According to the lawsuit, Wang distributed online several journal articles calling for democratic reform and a multiparty system in China. He did so anonymously by posting the articles in a Yahoo Group in 2000 and 2001. The lawsuit contends that Yahoo HK, a wholly owned Yahoo subsidiary based in Hong Kong, provided police with information linking Wang to the postings.
Cullinan of Yahoo disputed those claims.
"Yahoo HK does not exchange info with Yahoo China or give information to mainland Chinese security forces," he said.
Yahoo transferred its China operations to Alibaba.com in 2005, and owns a minority stake in that company, which is based in China.
On Sept. 1, 2002, Wang was arrested by Chinese authorities, according to the lawsuit, which says he was later kicked and beaten and was detained until September 2003, when he was sentenced to 10 years.
The lawsuit says that the Chinese court's judgment noted that Yahoo HK told investigators that the e-mail account used to disseminate the postings belonged to Wang.
The Alien Tort Claims Act, enacted in 1789, lets foreigners sue in US courts for fundamental violations of international law, like torture and genocide. It has been used in recent years to sue people who have violated basic human rights.
"The plaintiffs in this case have a lot of barriers to overcome," said Allen Weiner, a professor of international law at Stanford.
It was unclear, he said, whether the law would apply to a company like Yahoo.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant