It's bad enough when newspaper editorials, Western human rights groups and ordinary US customers condemn your company for bowing to the Chinese dictatorship and contributing to oppression.
But when the outrage begins rising, at great personal risk, from dissident voices trapped inside that dictatorship, well, that has to hurt.
Or not.
Yahoo has suffered a good deal of opprobrium after it was revealed last month that -- when government officials came calling -- the company's Hong Kong division simply surrendered information on a Chinese citizen who had presumably sought refuge, anonymity and a bit of freedom in the bosom of a Yahoo e-mail address: huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn.
Shi Tao (
Yahoo, meanwhile, gets to keep its piece of the gigantic China pie, insisting like most Western companies doing business there that it must abide by the laws of countries in which it operates.
"What if local law required Yahoo to cooperate in strictly separating the races?" asked Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a widely linked essay for the Los Angeles Times. "Or the rounding up and extermination of a certain race? Or the stoning of homosexuals?"
Jim Etchison, an information technology management consultant from Pomona, California, created BooYahoo (booyahoo.blogspot. com), a site dedicated to urging "freedom-loving citizens of the Internet to discontinue their use of Yahoo services as a result of their oppressive policies."
"I was a happy Yahoo user for about nine years and was so offended by the Shi Tao business that I boycotted them," Etchison said in an e-mail message. "What begins in China," he said, "will end where I live."
But the most damning missive came just over a week ago, in the form of an open letter to Yahoo's founder, Jerry Yang, from Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), a Chinese dissident in Beijing who is no stranger to censorship, prison and other indignities associated with the government's mission to stifle free speech and dissent.
"I must tell you that my indignation at and contempt for you and your company are not a bit less than my indignation at and contempt for the Communist regime," Liu wrote, according to a translated version of the letter appearing on the Web site of the China Information Center (cicus.org), a news and research clearinghouse based in Fairfax, Virginia.
The site was created by Harry Wu, an activist who spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps before moving to the US.
"Profit makes you dull in morality," Liu's lengthy and scathing message continued. "Did it ever occur to you that it is a shame for you to be considered a traitor to your customer Shi Tao?"
It is possible that both the US Congress and the US Commerce Department, which oversees the nation's exports, will come to a similar conclusion.
Representative Christopher Smith, a Republican and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, was outraged over the Yahoo incident. He has pledged to bring executives of the company to Capitol Hill to explain themselves.
"This is about accommodating a dictatorship," Smith said in a telephone interview. "It's outrageous to be complicit in cracking down on dissenters."
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS