Google decision a victory against internet censorship in China

Free Tibet strongly welcomes Google's decision to stop censoring
politically sensitive material generated by its Chinese search engine,
Google.cn.

From early this morning, users of Google's search engine inside China
are now being re-directed to Google's unrestricted Hong Kong site,
google.com.hk.

Internet users in China will still be unable to view material considered
sensitive by the Chinese authorities. This is because material provided
by Google's unrestricted Hong Kong site will be blocked by China's
"great firewall" which automatically prevents mainland Chinese users
from reading any sensitive material hosted on overseas portals.

Commenting on Google's refusal to continue to bow to the censorship
demands of the Chinese government, Free Tibet Director, Stephanie
Brigden, said:

"We applaud this decision by Google which is a victory against
censorship. We hope that it will encourage internet users throughout
China and Tibet to demand both the bringing down of China's "great
firewall" and the end to censorship by all other search engines in
China, be they Chinese operated or those operated by multinationals such
as Microsoft's "Bing". Freedom of expression and access to information
are cornerstones of any developed nation and economy. It is ultimately
in China's own national interest therefore to bring internet censorship
to an end."

Google's decision to remove its censorship filter, and instead to leave
the censoring to the Chinese government, represents a huge blow to the
prestige of the Chinese government. This is because China can hardly
conceal from its citizens the decision by the global internet leader to
abandon complicity in China's increasingly harsh internet censorship
regime.

The move has set an important new precedent for other internet and
technology companies operating in China. With Google's decisions making
worldwide headlines, it will be harder for companies like Microsoft,
which censors content on its own Chinese search engine "Bing", to
continue to remain complicit in the Chinese government's censorship
regime.

Google's decision to abandon internet censorship in China could not be
more timely. China's leaders have policed the internet with increasing
harshness in recent years, employing censorship controls as a weapon for
controlling their citizens.

In Tibet, the authorities have passed a series of harsh and
disproportionate sentences on Tibetans who have attempted to use the
internet as a means of communicating the situation inside Tibet to the
outside world. In November 2008 Wangdu, a Tibetan healthworker, was
sentenced to life imprisonment after he sent an email to a contact
outside Tibet about the violent Chinese crackdown following the Spring
2008 protests. A Tibetan woman, Norzin Wangmo, was sentenced in 2008 to
5 years imprisonment for using the internet and phone to communicate
information about the dire human rights situation inside Tibet. And in
2009 Gonpo Tsering, a 32 year old Tibetan tourist guide, was sentenced
to three years, also for sending emails and texts about the 2008 Tibet
protests.


Ends


For further information:

Matt Whitticase, External Communications

t +44 (0)20 7324 4605 / +44 (0)7515 788456 and email: matt@freetibet.org

Stephanie Brigden, Director

t +44 (0)20 7324 4605 / +44 (0)7530 528264 and email:
stephanie@freetibet.org