In the same week that a Chinese government official acclaimed the
growing level of Internet use in his country, human rights group
Amnesty International issued a report detailing the detainment or
imprisonment of 33 people in China in connection with use of the
global computer network.
The list is heavy with the names of political activists and
dissidents detained or jailed for activities carried out over or in
connection with the Internet, including those of four members of
the China Democracy Party (CDP) and 14 members of Falun Gong, a
spiritual movement that is outlawed in China.
The 33 cases detailed in the report do not necessarily point to a
crack down on activities conducted over the Internet - China
arrests activists on a regular basis and in many cases the Internet
is not involved - but it does illustrate the watchful eye that the
state keeps on the roughly 54 million people that are now said to
use the Internet in China.
"It's very difficult to know," said Mark Allison, the Amnesty
researcher who wrote the report, when asked how big a part the
Internet played in the cases outlined. "They have all been arrested
either partly or wholly for Internet use. Quite often on one charge
of spreading reactionary material and another charge [for example]
of being a member of Falun Gong. They are found in the first place
because they have been using the Net and their identities were
known."
The longest sentence detailed in the report is a 12-year jail term
handed down to Yao Yue, a Beijing graduate student who was tried in
December last year for downloading and disseminating material from
Falun Gong Web sites, according to Amnesty.
Among the four members of the CDP detailed by Amnesty, the longest
sentence was a 10-year jail term handed down to Wang Jinbo, a CDP
member in Sichuan province who was charged with subversion last
year. Other terms are three-year or four-year sentences for
subversion or endangering state security.
Three of the detainees have since died, according to Amnesty,
adding that two deaths were reportedly "a result of torture". The
third was attributed to leukaemia.
Details of the 33 cases came from domestic and international media
reports and from Amnesty's own sources in China.
"They are probably just the tip of the iceberg," said
Allison.
All but one of the detentions described in the report took place
before 2002. Earlier this year, new regulations came into force
obliging Internet service providers to monitor online activities
more closely and Internet cafes have recently been told to install
monitoring software that blocks certain Web sites, according to the
report.
Amnesty also called for the immediate release of all people
detained in relation to activities over the Internet.
"Everyone detained purely for peacefully publishing their views or
other information on the Internet or for accessing certain Web
sites are prisoners of conscience," the group said in a statement
issued along with the report. "They should be released immediately
and unconditionally."
China's first Internet arrest took place in 1998 when Lin Hai, a
software company owner in Shanghai, was arrested for "inciting the
overthrow of state power" after he provided 30,000 Chinese e-mail
addresses to a US-based human rights and activist group. Lin was
sentenced to two years imprisonment in early 1999 but released six
months early in 2001.