Huang Qi awarded 2004
Cyberfreedom Prize
Reporters Without Borders
on 22 June awarded its 2004 Cyberfreedom Prize to Huang
Qi, who has been imprisoned for four years for
criticising the Chinese government on his Internet site.
The international press freedom organisation also
released its report 'Internet Under Surveillance 2004' -
full version available online - that monitors press
freedom on the Internet in nearly 60 countries.
Reporters Without
Borders on 22 June awarded its 2004 Cyberfreedom
Prize to Huang Qi, who has been imprisoned for four
years for criticising the Chinese government on his
website. The prize is funded with the help of the
Fondation de France. The international press freedom
organisation also released its report 'Internet Under
Surveillance 2004', produced with the assistance of the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Bank
handling official deposits.
« Internet under surveillance » 2004
report
Reporters Without Borders
has published its annual report on the state of online
freedom in more than 60 countries - The Internet Under
Surveillance. The rights of Internet users, webmasters
and online journalists have been substantially curbed
since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United
States. The fight against terrorism has led to stricter
monitoring of Internet traffic in both democracies and
under authoritarian regimes.
Four countries throw
people in jail for posting "subversive" topics online -
China (with 63 cyber-dissidents in prison), Vietnam (7),
the Maldives (3) and Syria (2). Censorship of online
publications is steadily increasing and dictatorships
are developing more and more sophisticated ways of
filtering the Internet. China and Vietnam are experts in
the field. But the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Tunisia and Turkmenistan also block access to a very
wide range of websites, including those featuring
pornography, independent magazines, banned religions and
human rights.
Cuba, Burma and North
Korea have even harsher policies and restrict Internet
access to a tiny minority of citizens rather than set up
costly monitoring systems. Democratic countries have
steadily chipped away at the freedom of their Internet
users. This involves laudable aims, such as fighting
online paedophilia, helping dismantle terrorist networks
and protecting cultural industries against piracy. But
governments are having trouble reconciling users' rights
to message privacy and freedom of expression with more
and more serious financial and security concerns. As a
result, Internet freedom is now much less legally
protected than that of the traditional media in most
democratic countries.
Read the full report
The winner
When state security
police came to arrest Huang Qi at his home on 3 June
2000, he just had time to send a last e-mail message
saying : "Goodbye everyone, the police want to take me
away. We've got a long road ahead of us. Thanks to all
those helping to further democracy in China." Huang,
founder of the website www.tianwang.com, was charged in
January 2001 with "subversion" and "incitement to
overthrow the government" (under articles 103 and 105 of
the criminal code) for allowing articles about the June
1989 Tiananmen massacre to appear on his website (based
in the United States after being banned in China). He
had to wait until 9 May 2003 to find out he had been
sentenced to five years in prison.
Worn out by prison
interrogators and bad detention conditions, he fainted
at the first court hearing in February 2001. A Western
diplomat who was present said he had a scar on his
forehead and had lost a tooth, apparently after being
beaten. He was given a sham secret trial in August that
year and his relatives were not allowed to visit him for
three years after his arrest.
He told his wife Zeng Li
he had been regularly beaten during his first years in
prison by police who forced him to sleep on the floor of
his cell for a year. He was also kept handcuffed in a
dimly-lit room for a year. His cell was changed each
month because his guards said he was talking too much to
fellow prisoners about corruption and politics. |
