And if you are going to make yourself a cog in the repressive machinery of a human rights violating entity like Red China, expect to be sued.

A human rights group sued Yahoo on Wednesday, accusing the Internet giant of abetting the torture of pro-democracy writers by releasing data that allowed China's government to identify them.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, says the company was complicit in the arrests of 57-year-old Wang Xiaoning and other Chinese Internet activists. The suit is the latest development in a campaign by advocacy groups to spotlight the conduct of U.S. companies in China.

As they seek a slice of the booming Chinese market, Yahoo and other American companies have sometimes set aside core American values, such as free speech, to comply with the communist government's laws.

The suit, in trying to hold Yahoo accountable, could become an important test case. Advocacy groups are seeking to use a 217-year-old U.S. law to punish corporations for human rights violations abroad, an effort the Bush administration has opposed.

In 2003, Wang began serving a 10-year sentence on charges that he incited subversion with online treatises criticizing the government. He is named as a plaintiff in the Yahoo suit, which was filed with help from the World Organization for Human Rights USA, based in Washington.

Yahoo is guilty of "an act of corporate irresponsibility," said Morton Sklar, executive director of the group. "Yahoo had reason to know that if they provided China with identification information that those individuals would be arrested."

I'm ashamed of the Bush Administration for opposing this suit -- and wish that they would instead seek criminal penalties against Yahoo, Google, and other companies that seek to make money by turning democracy advocates over to oppressive regimes for their exercise of a right as fundamental as freedom of speech.

What next? Will Yahoo cooperate with Islamists in identifying targets for beheading due to their "Islamophobic" statements and sentiments?

Posted by: Greg at 10:18 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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