Yahoo grassed up journalist to Chinese cops

The Inquirer
Sep. 07, 2005

SEARCH OUTFIT Yahoo! has helped send a Chinese business journalist, who sent a 'pro-democracy' story to the foreign press, to jail for more than 10 years.

According to Reporters without Borders, Shi Tao, who worked for Contemporary Business News, was convicted in a case concerning "top secret level state secrets" because Yahoo Holdings supplied information that helped police track him down.

Shi supplied information to foreign news sites about then pending 15th anniversary of China's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

Journalists in that country had been told not to mention 1989 and pretend that it didn’t happen, if they knew what was good for them.

Rather than sitting on a good story, Tao gave it to the foreign press. The Chinese government considered the 1989 crackdown a state secret, and so Shi Tao was arrested for spying.

RWB thinks that it is the first time that a foreign company has helped Beijing provide evidence for a conviction in such a case.

Yahoo is only allowed to operate in China if it helps Beijing censor information and keep a firm limit on freedom of speech.