The Journalist Whom Yahoo Identified to Chinese Authorities And Now Languishes in Jail Serving 10-Years Wins WAN’s Golden Pen of Freedom

Shi’s mother, Gao Qinsheng, openly wept and punched the air with her fist as she accepted the award for her 38-year-old son whom she described as "a direct victim of the shackles of press freedom." She added The Golden Pen Award "proves that my son is indeed innocent. He has only done what a courageous journalist should do. That is why he has got the support and the sympathy from his colleagues all over the world, who uphold justice.”

Chinese authorities had asked WAN to withdraw the award, and there is some fear for the personal risk taken by Gao Qinsheng in travelling to Cape Town to accept it.

George Brock, president of the World Editors Forum, who presented the award took aim at Yahoo. "How the Chinese authorities traced this e-mail, and discovered that Shi Tao was the author, is a cautionary tale with widespread implications for on-line privacy, and for the way that western communications companies do business in their understandably difficult dealings with repressive regimes.

"While those who do business around the globe must often deal with non-democratic countries, we believe that new media companies that provide more and more of the means for global communications have a special responsibility" he said. "They have an obligation to ensure that the basic human rights of their users will be protected, and they must carefully guard against becoming accomplices in repression."

ftm background

ftm Ahead of the News – One Of Those Iranian Suits WAS Flogged On eBay!
In our story about the released British sailors and marines who had been captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and the subsequent decision, later revoked, by the Defense Ministry to allow those released captives to sell their exclusive stories to the media, ftm noted sarcastically in its final paragraph:

Today Is World Press Freedom Day, Hurrah – Except In Many Places In Our World Journalists Have Little Joy, Just Harassment and Imprisonment
Today is World Press Freedom Day, a day, as the United Nations reminds us, to remember the media’s vital role in promoting sustainable peace, democracy and development. And yet conditions for independent media are worsening in many parts of the world, threatening democracy and human rights, according to the non-governmental Freedom House that has issued a chilling report on the decline in press freedoms globally, and how Internet freedom in particular is under siege in some countries.

Medvedev Tells The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) the Ongoing Dialogue With The Kremlin Over Russian Press Freedom Is Positive For It Would Never Have Been Possible Under The Soviet Era
On the Monday President Vladimir Putin gave rather short shrift to The World Association of Newspapers campaign for more press freedom in the Russian Federation, and the next day the Kremlin rolled out Putin’s first deputy prime minister who said pretty much the same thing, but at least he did it with a smile.

In Iraq Killing Journalists Is Almost A Sport, In Iran The Wrong Blogs Gets You In Jail, and In The US Major Internet Companies Put Profit Ahead of Press Freedom In China -- All Condemnations By The World Association Of Newspapers Press Freedom Review
In the past six months alone 38 journalists have died around the world, 16 of them in Iraq, making that country the most dangerous for working journalists. But that’s not the only place where journalists, and citizen journalists, face death or imprisonment, and the sad fact is that there is increasing global pressure on freedom of expression, according to the semi-annual report by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

Twenty Years of Reporters Sans Frontieres
In almost every news story about the blows suffered by those pursuing the journalistic calling, Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders - RSF) gives its voice to each outrage.

Shi has now joined a lawsuit being brought against Yahoo in the heart of Silicion Valley by another imprisoned cyber-dissident, Wang Xiaoning, for providing the Chinese authorities with information from an email account that was used to convict him.

Shi’s name was added May 30 to the lawsuit that had been filed in April against Yahoo by Wang’s wife, Yu Ling, and the World Organisation for Human Rights USA in San Francisco. Wang was sentenced in 2003 to 10 years in prison for “inciting the government’s overthrow.” Yahoo gave the police information that enabled them to identify Wang, but the US company has continually stated that it has to comply with China’s laws to operate there.

Shi is serving a 10-year sentence on charges of "leaking state secrets" for writing an e-mail about media restrictions in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2004. The e-mail was picked up by several foreign internet portals -- and also by Chinese authorities, with the assistance of Yahoo. The internet service provider gave state security authorities information that allowed them to trace the message to a computer Shi used at the newspaper where he worked, the Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News).

By coincidence the award was given June 4, the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

"Even today, most Chinese know nothing about what happened that day. The Communist regime continues to prevent the Chinese media from talking and writing about it openly and honestly and will go to great lengths to silence any such revelations and to severely punish those who make them,” Brock said.

"Shi Tao, whom we are honouring here today, has learned this to his own great cost. He revealed what the state did not want known and he pays the price in prison today.”

WAN also announced a campaign to win Shi’s release and dozens of other journalists and cyber-dissidents in Chinese jails such as Wang Xiaoning, and to keep the cases in the forefront of news coverage in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics next year which the Chinese will find particularly embarrassing.

This is the second time this week that WAN will have angered China. Its board, meeting in Cape Town, accepted The Taipei Newspaper Association (TNA) in Taiwan as the 77th national newspaper association to join WAN. The Chinese Newspaper Association on the mainland is not a WAN member.

"We are delighted to welcome Taiwan's newspapers to the global newspaper community represented by WAN," said Timothy Balding, WAN Chief Executive Officer. "The TNA is dedicated to press freedom as a guiding principle, in stark contrast to the situation in most of the Chinese newspaper world. The TNA will now have full access to the world newspaper community through its membership in WAN, and we hope their example won't be lost on the authorities in Beijing."

WAN earlier this year refused the demand by the official China Newspaper Association (CNA) that the Shi award be withdrawn. CNA claimed the award was not justified because a Chinese court "handled the case according to law and made the appropriate sentence" and that China's constitution protects press freedom.

"We are not impressed by this argument," Brock said. "If the law makes it possible to send a journalist to jail in such a case, the law should be abolished immediately since it contradicts every conceivable international standard and convention on freedom of information and human rights.

"As for the claim that the Chinese constitution protects freedom of speech, this guarantee is nothing more than a mere fiction. Such freedoms simply do not exist in China. Indeed, if they did, Shi Tao would not be in prison today, nor would dozens of other journalists."

Shi distributed information that had been sent to his newspaper by the Chinese authorities, warning journalists of the dangers of "social destabilisation" and risks linked to the return of certain dissidents to China for the commemoration of the massacre, in which democracy supporters, mostly students, were brutally gunned down by Chinese troops on 4 June 1989.

Shi, a poet as well as a journalist, had published numerous essays and political problems relating to social problems in China on pro-democracy web sites. He worked as a reporter, editor and division director at several newspapers, joining the Contemporary Business News in 2004 as an editorial director and assistant to its Chief Editor. He resigned from the paper in May 2004 to become a free-lance journalist and was arrested six months later.

WAN says he is one of dozens of journalists and cyber-dissidents in prison in China, the world's largest jailer of journalists.