Congratulations to AIDS activist Hu Jia who was released from detention today. His wife Zeng Jinyan has been chronicling Hu Jia's ordeal on an MSN Spaces blog. Today she announced his release [in Chinese] on the blog with a 2-sentence post:
"Hu Jia cave me a phone call saying he has been released, but we still haven't met face-to-face. If there is more news, I'll announce it on the blog."
As of this writing the post has 37 happy comments.
I'd like to point out something very important here. Jinyan has been blogging all month on her MSN Spaces blog. It has not been blocked to readers inside China.
I don't know whether Microsoft received any calls or requests from Chinese authorities to block her blog to access from Chinese ISP's (in keeping with their current censorship mechanism seen in action here). But in any case, it's a good sign that MSN is providing a space for human rights activism in China. I hope they will continue to do so.
Microsoft bowed to censorship demands by the Chinese government as did Yahoo and Google.
These three companies could have stood up to China, but instead they chose to agree to censorship in return for the prospect of making money.
You can put up all the cute little "I blog for Human Rights" ads you want, but censorship is still a fact of life in China.
Posted by: Mike Drips | March 30, 2006 at 04:35 AM