Translated from French to English, and paragraphed for you, since many of us did/do not understand what was written above.
[Babelfish direct tranlation ~may not be completely accurate]
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Through conversation with a journalist American, we come to learn that the American company Yahoo granted a purse of a million dollars to the university of Stanford (California) for a programme of support for the journalists "working in countries not respecting the freedom of expression".
The news initially made us laugh. Then the laughter made place with deep a faintness. Yahoo, journalists, freedom of expression... Doesn't that point out anything to you? Let us refresh our reports, and perhaps those of the leaders of Stanford.
This company collaborates since 2002 with the Chinese authorities to purge the Web of very contained "subversive". It is the first search engine to have agreed to censure its contents to like in Peijing. On Yahoo.cn, useless to seek a reference to the massacres of the Tiananmen place in 1989, or to the infringements of the humans right in the country, the results are filtered automatically by the Californian company.
Worse still. Reporters without borders discovered that Yahoo collaborated regularly with Chinese justice and was responsible for the arrest of several independent journalists. This company, which is prided today to support the journalism of investigation, indeed agreed to lodge its service of courriel on the Chinese territory.
Each time the police force asked him to identify the source of illegal electronic mails which criticized the government Yahoo is carried out without discussion. We have the proof that the giant of the Internet is implied in the arrest and the judgment of at least four journalists and militant democratic.
More known, Shi CAT, was condemned to ten years of prison, in April 2005, for "disclosure of secrecies of State abroad". The journalist was actually shown to have transmitted a note circulating within his newspaper which prohibited with the reporters to speak about the commemoration of the events of Tiananmen. Police officers, which knew that the electronic address used to forward this document was managed by Yahoo.cn, were addressed directly to the American company to help them to pin the "criminal".
The latter immediately transmitted all information of which it laid out addresses IP of the computer, contents of the messages and the enclosures, etc , thus offering the file of charge of the journalist. And it is this company, true model of compromising in a repressive mode, which comes today to be praised to support independent journalism! Already, when Yahoo had announced to launch out in the great report, discharging a considered journalist, Kevin Sites, to make him follow the great conflicts of planet, the news had made smile.
The first rule, when one regards oneself as media of information, is to protect its fellow-members. No drafting of a democratic country would agree to give one of its contacts in grazing ground to the police force of a repressive State, even less if it acts of a journalist.
In Yahoo, that did not pose a problem. They say new media, not hesitating to relegate the press to the row of dinosaur of information, but, when one speaks to them about ethics of journalism, they hide behind excuses "business": "We are really afflicted by these judgments. But we are a private company and we must yield with the local laws ", declare in chorus the Californian leaders.
Then, when we hear Jerry Yang, the chairman of Yahoo, to affirm without reddening which it is committed "facilitating the access to free information", eh well, yes, we have a heave. We wish to especially to say him that it will repurchase neither its image nor its conscience with this million dollars. If he wants to show in the world and his customers whom he respects the freedom of expression, that he proves it in China, not by distributing alms, was it consequent.
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By Robert MENARD, Julien BREAD in Liberation.fr Robert Ménard: secretary-general of Reporters without borders Julien Bread: person in charge for Office Internet and freedoms of the organization.
