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.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS