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China rights activists elated by Google

WASHINGTON - Human rights activists rejoiced on Tuesday over Google’s threat to pull out of China, hoping it would be a “wake-up call” for businesses that make compromises to enter the giant market.

Blogging sites including Twitter were swarmed with messages of elation after the Internet giant’s shock announcement that it would reconsider its China business due to sophisticated cyberattacks on human rights activists’ accounts.

“Through international pressure, finally a big business in the West has come to realize its own conscience,” prominent Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng told AFP.

“Some Western businesses thought that by making compromises with the Chinese communists’ regime, they could do business as they wished. However, this is impossible because the Chinese government would not be satisfied,” said Wei, who lives in exile in the United States after 18 years in prison in China.

International human rights group Amnesty International hailed Google and called for other companies to follow suit.

“We welcome Google’s stand and urge other Internet companies to follow through and not be party to China’s state-sponsored Internet censorship,” said T. Kumar, Amnesty International’s Washington-based advocacy director.

“We’re glad that at last international Internet companies are waking up to the reality that they cannot go along with oppressive nations like China,” Kumar said.

Human Rights Watch’s Arvind Ganesan said that Google set “a great example” and voiced hope that more companies — and governments — would take policies that safeguard rights.

Rights champions said that the turn-around was especially welcome coming from Google, which has long faced the wrath of activists for cooperating with China’s official censors.

The Internet giant in 2006 launched its Google.cn service with an explanation that it had removed content from search results to conform with “local law.”

“It’s extremely significant because Google went in under a cloud of criticism. It was quite public that it was making a human rights trade-off,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of New York-based Human Rights in China.

“It’s really a wake-up call to the international community about the real risks of doing business in China,” she said.

She noted that the decision also came as China takes an increasingly hard line on domestic dissent, both by controlling the Internet and clamping down on activists.

Intellectual Liu Xiaobo, the author of a landmark petition for democratic reform, was last month sentenced to 11 years in jail despite vigorous protests overseas.

But even with Google pledging to stop filtering searches, Internet users in China will have plenty of obstacles to finding sensitive content. Share prices in homegrown Chinese search-engine Baidu soared in after-hours following Google’s announcement.

China routinely blocks social networking and blogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, although Beijing struggled last year to enforce rules that all new computers be installed with filtering software.

Global technology companies bristled at the imposition of the “Green Dam” system, which China says is designed to protect children from pornography but activists suspect is really meant to target politically sensitive information.

One major target of Internet censorship in China is the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement which was banned by China in 1999.

Levi Browde, head of the Falun Dafa Information Center in New York, said that Internet restrictions were a way not only to identify and target Falun Gong practitioners but to maintain public opinion.

“Prohibiting people from having access to free information about what’s happening is one of the biggest enablers not just in the persecution of Falun Gong but any sort of large-scale persecution. This is what makes it possible,” he said.