The third Yahoo! China case

Reporters Without Borders and the DuiHua Foundation have now released details of the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison for “subversion” on 18 November 2003, thanks in part to evidence supplied by Yahoo! Jiang's case is the third known instance in which Yahoo! handed over user information that was then used to try and convict a Chinese dissident. Both the original and the translation of the verdict, citing the Yahoo! information, can be uploaded as pdf here. The verdict's list of evidence includes:

(2) User information provided by Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. for the email account ZYMZd2002 used jointly by Li Yibing and Jiang Lijun, confirming the registration data for that mailbox. In that user’s drafts folder was saved a draft email entitled “Declaration,” saved on September 25, the contents of which were the same as the “Freedom and Democracy Party Program” and “Declaration of Establishment” recovered and printed from Liu Di’s computer and Li Yibing’s floppy disk.

...and the final guilty verdict:

This court finds that defendant Jiang Lijun actively participated in a plot to subvert the
people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and to overthrow the socialist order; his actions constitute the crime of subversion and should be punished in accordance with law.

Way to go, Yahoo!  When will Yahoo! senior executives, and their Chinese partner Alibaba, announce concrete measures to prevent such cases from happening in the future? 

Their congressional testimony claimed they are reviewing practices, yet in public statements their top executives sound pretty unapologetic and unrepentant.

Comments

[mahathir_fan]

"Jiang Lijun, 40, was sentenced to four years in prison for “subversion” on 18 November 2003, accused of seeking to use “violent means” to impose democracy"

Using violent means to overthrow the government instead of using legitimate means through election is against the law in any country and not protected by freedom of speech.

In Gitlow Vs. New York, the Supreme court ruled that Gitlow who printed articles to incite a "violent" overthrow of the US government cannot claim freedom of speech as his right to print those articles. See: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/140/

In China, there are legitimate ways to bring about regime change, through elections, as can be seen from the recent Tai Shi villagers or here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/08/content_288018.htm

[lzh]

First of all, Jiang was convicted of inciting subversion, not subversion itself, so the illegal act is related to alleged advocacy of violence, not use of violence itself.

I've read the posted verdict pretty carefully, and I don't see evidence that Jiang's alleged advocacy of violence was conducted outside of private conversations or a diary entry. Unless Jiang took steps to publish those opinions, I don't see the analogy with Gitlow.

As for village elections being a legitimate method of achieving "regime change" in China, all I can say is that it's good to have dreams.