Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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I mentioned citizen journalists. YouTube.com is a form of citizen journalism. It is operated
by user-generated content with very huge impact and without much input from the
company. In China, many things happen without journalists being on the scene. They
cannot be there during a protest or police violence, even if they know something has
happened. So in this situation, the citizen journalist steps in and reports through Boxun or
through blogs
With Internet technology, China's control on the media has been broken. China literally
cannot control the information anymore because it is so easy to receive and share
information through the Internet. With such a number of blogs inside China, some 90
million, a lot of discussion goes on. There is Internet censorship in China, but still the
information comes out after a few days.
NGOs like Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists can use the
information from the Internet as a resource to affect policy makers. So we can observe
that what we do affects policy-making in China and outside, too. Two weeks ago, when I
went to [Washington] DC to get a visa to attend this conference, I met people at the
Congress who told me that they watch Internet daily for what happens in China.
We know the firewall exists. It means China does not have the Internet, it has an Intranet.
Web sites outside China like us receive attacks, literally on a daily basis. Sometimes these
are very serious. Last year, a two-month denial of service attack meant our web site could
not be accessed by users for a long period of time. In December, our blogs were broken
into and all the contents were deleted. And this month, our video web site was broken
into and some user information was changed. Also, viruses have been targeted against
dissidents. We had the experience at this conference. They put a spy in the user's
computer. In China at all the Internet cafés, the business owners must install spy software
on each PC at their own expense.
So why does the Chinese government want to do this spying and seek information from
companies like Yahoo? Because they want to know who did what and then punish some
people. Many people have gotten into trouble. If you read accounts about jailed reporters
and Internet users, a number of them relate to Boxun. Let me give a few examples.
First, Huiang Jinqiu. He published about 500 articles before he was arrested. In September
2003 he was arrested and the next year he got a 12-year sentence.
You may also know about Li Changqing. He was a former deputy director of Fu Zhou daily.
He reported about dengue fever through Boxun in October 2004. He lost his freedom in
December 2004 and received a three-year sentence. He is the winner of this year's
Golden Pen of Freedom award. He was released in February. He is doing fine now.
The next is Sun Lin and his wife He Fang. They both started to report for Boxun in late
October 2006. The difference is that they used a video. They acted in a very public way,
almost on a daily basis for a period. He had a business card with his contact details. He