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Yahoo founder joins campaign to free dissidents

Yahoo boss Jerry Yang, whose company once allegedly helped Chinese police nab and jail cyber dissidents, is now in the forefront of a global campaign to free those languishing in prison for expressing their views online.

He has established a “Yahoo! Human Rights Fund” to provide humanitarian and legal support to political dissidents who have been imprisoned for expressing their views online as well as support for their families.

And in between his grueling schedule as chief executive of the Internet giant, the billionaire Yang paces the corridors of the US Congress, writes to government officials and meets with human-rights groups to champion Internet freedom.

Yahoo also provided US$1 million to Washington-based Georgetown University to carry out research on the link between international values and Internet and communication technologies.

“I think that I’m a big believer in the American values [but] as we operate around the world, we don’t walk around having a very heavy-handed American point of view,” Yang said on Thursday as he marked the first anniversary of the university’s Yahoo fellowship program.

In November the US Congress sharply rebuked the Taiwanese-American Yang and Yahoo, which he co-founded, over the company’s role in landing a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao (師濤), behind bars.

Shi was convicted in 2005 of divulging state secrets after he posted a Chinese government order forbidding media organizations from marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising on the Internet.

Police identified him using information provided by Yahoo. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

“As an early Internet pioneer, Yahoo has been at the forefront as our innovative technologies opened up new frontiers for citizens of the world,” Yang said.

“With these opportunities also come challenges when these technologies are used for other purposes, ones that contradict our core values of access to information and freedom of expression,” he said.

Following Yahoo’s nasty experience in China, Yahoo is now holding talks with industry partners, academics, human rights groups and investors to promote an industry code of conduct governing the behavior of top global technology and communication companies operating in “challenging markets,” Yang said.
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