Morton Sklar is the Executive Director of the
World Organization for Human Rights USA. He spoke on Friday afternoon, April 20, 2007 with
Human Rights Channel reporter Marc Strassman about the lawsuit (
“Chinese Cyber-Dissident and Wife Sue Yahoo”) he filed on Wednesday, April 18, 2007, in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, on behalf of pro-democracy Internet user Wang Xiaoning and his wife, Yu Ling, against Yahoo! for aiding and abetting the government of the People’s Republic of China in detaining, torturing, and imprisoning Wang for doing what millions of American Internet users do routinely everyday, namely, complaining about government policies and advocating their own views.
Wang is now serving a ten-year prison sentence in a hard labor prison in Beijing for publishing such things as:
“The main reason that the Chinese Communist Party as been able to retain power in spite of being so corrupt is that China does not yet have a party that can replace the Communist Party.”
An article in the current issue of
The Economist, published in ways and in places that do not subject its reporters and editors to detention, torture, or imprisonment, but which makes exactly the same point as that made by Wang in the Internet writings that have cost him his freedom and both him and his wife great suffering, says:
“CORRUPTION, Chinese officials often fret out loud, could destroy the Community Party--such is the popular anger it provokes and so at odds is it with the ideals the party espouses. Yet frequent crackdowns and the occasional toppling of sleazy officials appear to have little impact. Nor, many fear, will a new anti-corruption agency, due to be set up this year….”
You can read the complaint filed on April 18, 2007, against Yahoo! In U.S. District Court on behalf of Wang Xiaoning and Yu Ling by clicking
here.
You can listen to that conversation with Morton Sklar, Executive Director of the
World Organization for Human Rights USA, by clicking on the appropriate menu button in the
Human Rights Channel Brightcove Player below.
Among the points made in that interview was a comparison of what Yahoo! is allegedly doing by aiding and abetting the corrupt and repressive Chinese government in its efforts to stifle dissent and perpetuate its dictatorial and authoritarian control of the most-populous nation in the world with what IBM allegedly did by using, and further developing, its then-state-of-the-art punch card information processing technology to aid and abet the Nazi government of Germany in its efforts to find, detain, torture, and murder millions of European Jews and other of its victims, a story told in excruciatingly precise detail in
IBM and the Holocaust, by
Edwin Black.
For more on a lawsuit against IBM for abetting the Holocaust through collaboration with the Nazis in using cutting-edge technology to locate and destroy “enemies of the state,” go to:
“FindLaw Forum: Did IBM aid the Holocaust?”.
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