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Businessman Cai Lujun, 35, will be in jail for the next two years because he posted essays discussing problems affecting Chinese farmers on the internet.
Zhao Chunying, 57, from Heilongjiang was found beaten to death in a Chinese jail after being arrested for writing an account of how she was tortured during a previous detention.
Computer engineer Yang Zili, 31, and freelance writer Zhang Honghai, 30, were sent to jail for eight years each for "subverting state power". They had sent articles of political and social concerns via e-mail.
Web essayist Du Daobin is more fortunate than the others.
This month a Chinese court convicted him of subversion and gave him a three year sentence. The sentence was suspended and he was allowed to go home and do four years of probation, which means no more web commentaries calling for greater democracy in Hong Kong.
Human rights activists in Canada, U.S. and Europe say these people are among an estimated 100 known Chinese internet users who have been arrested by China's web police thanks to technology that has been financed with your tax dollars.
If that is not bad enough, your tax dollars have also helped China to block the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation website because it contains references to rights and democracy.
The Trudeau Foundation, which awards scholarships to human rights and social justice students, has not had one Chinese internet user visit it over the past year.
Among the multinational corporations helping the communist regime block websites and build the so called "Great Firewall of China" is Nortel Networks, a frequent recipient of Ottawa's largesse - the latest of which is a waiver on a $750 million Canadian taxpayer-backed financing agreement.
Nortel's Tina Warren said the technology sold to China is no different than what it sells elsewhere.
It is "intended to enable citizens of the world to improve their access to communications for the collective sharing of knowledge that can improve the world around us," she said.
"Nortel's position on this is criminal from a moral perspective..it is absolutely scandalous," lawyer Clive Ansley, a Vancouver Island-based expert on Chinese legal issues, told The Asian Pacific Post.
"What this company is doing is basically telling China that we at Nortel can help you track down activists and free speech advocates," said Ansley, a former professor of Chinese studies and Chinese law in Canada, who was the first foreign lawyer to open a law office in Shanghai.
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"The Liberal government believes that this process of engagement which leads to millions of tax dollars going to China will help the communist regime become more democratic and respect human rights.
"That is like trying to teach a tiger to be a vegetarian," said Ansley, who spent the last 20 years in China and Taiwan.
"Ansley and other human right advocates, including Erping Zhang from the Association for Asian Research and Harry Wu of the Laogai (China's prison work camps) Research Foundation recently concluded a speaking tour of Denmark, Sweden and Norway where they presented papers at parliaments and universities on China's crackdown on dissidents.
In a telephone interview with The Asian Pacific Post from New York, Erping Zhang said
the US $800-million Golden Shield project put all Chinese Internet surfers at risk, as they are being monitored live by over 30,000 cyber cops.
"China is the only country on earth that has crafted the so-called "cyber crime", and at least over 100 cyber dissidents are now serving either labor camps or jail terms in China," said Zhang.
"This Golden Shield project developed by some Western IT companies including Nortel will serve as a tool of suppression by Beijing to control the Chinese people - this is not just a legal issue, but also a moral matter.
"Would Western companies today help Nazi Germany or Saddam's regime with similar technology to monitor their peoples? I wish to remind those foreign IT companies like Nortel who are involved in constructing this Golden Shield project: If you think that your contribution to this Golden Shield project is harmless, why don't you give up your foreign passports and live like those ordinary Chinese people in China?
"How would you feel if China is doing this Golden Shield project in your own homeland," he said.
Zhang urged Canadian lawmakers to ban technology transfer that helps suppress people of other countries.
Darrel Stinson, the Conservative MP for Okanagan Shuswap said companies like Nortel cannot just say their technology is neutral and not be responsible about how it is used.
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Canadian researcher Greg Walton, whose ground-breaking work on China's Golden Shield shed light on Nortel's connection to the sinister program said the company's technology helps China track individual internet users at homes, in cyber cafés and in universities and businesses.
In a report published by the Montreal-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Walton disclosed that Nortel's "Personal Internet" suite program has greatly enhanced the ability of Internet service providers to track the communications of almost half of China's individual Internet users.
He pointed out that Nortel's privacy statement for the Internet, which states it will not sell, rent or share personal data with any other organization, appears at odds with its work in China.
Former Liberal cabinet minister Warren Allmand, president of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, in a statement following Walton's report said: "Many companies, including notably Nortel Networks, until recently Canada's largest firm, are playing key roles in meeting the security needs of the Chinese government."
Other companies helping Beijing develop the Golden Shield include Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems.
Amnesty International, whose website is blocked in China states that as of January, 7 2004, it had recorded the names of 54 people who had been detained or imprisoned for disseminating their beliefs or information through the Internet ñ a 60 per cent increase as compared to figures recorded at the end of 2002. Prison sentences ranged from two to 12 years
Those detained for downloading information from the Internet, expressing their opinions or circulating information on the Internet or by email include students, political dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners, workers, writers, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, former police officers, engineers, and businessmen.
China has also ordered all 110,000 Internet cafes in the country to now use a particular form of software that will control access to websites considered harmful or subversive - including those of Amnesty itself, other international human rights groups, news and non-governmental organizations,
A study by Harvard University's Berkman Center on 204,012 distinct websites said as many as many as one in 10 websites, are being deliberately blocked to users in China.
http://www.asianpacificpost.com/news/article/136.html