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Alert

Cyber-dissident sentenced to 18 months in reeducation camp; crackdown on weblogs continues

(RSF/IFEX) - On 19 March 2004, cyber-dissident Ma Yalian was sentenced to 18 months in a work reeducation camp for posting articles on the Internet exposing failings in China's complaints system for citizens. The authorities have also stepped up censorship of weblogs.

RSF condemned the sentence imposed on Ma Yalian. "This woman has been sent to a reeducation camp for the second time without being tried by a court. This practice shames China, which has just incorporated human rights into its constitution," the organisation said. "We are appalled by the cynicism of the Chinese leadership and call on foreign governments to condemn this type of extra-judicial punishment," RSF added.

Ma Yalian posted articles about the harassment of citizens who express dissatisfaction with the authorities. The articles were posted on the legal website http://chineselawyer.com.cn and on http://www.dajiyuan.com, a website run by the Falun Gong spiritual group.

Chinese citizens have the right to make their complaints known via a national network of administrative offices. The organisation Human Rights in China said Ma Yalian had criticised the system, which is ineffective, and had provided specific examples of complainants being poorly treated by the authorities. Ma Yalian also said there had been cases in which individuals had committed suicide in front of certain administrative offices.

A Reeducation Through Labor Management Committee sentenced the cyber-dissident to 18 months in a work reeducation camp, a sentence that is usually reserved for juvenile delinquents, drug addicts and prostitutes. Such sentences are also used to silence political or religious dissidents.

Ma Yalian previously filed several complaints after she was evicted from her residence as a result of an urban redevelopment plan in Shanghai. In August 2001, she was sentenced to one year in a work camp. She said she was beaten during her time there.

In addition, the Chinese authorities have escalated their crackdown on the Internet. RSF previously reported the blocking of the Blogbus.com and Blogcn.com websites, which create and host weblogs (see IFEX alert of 17 March 2004). Other similar sites have recently become inaccessible as well, according to information obtained by RSF. For example, weblogs hosted by the weblogging service Typepad are now being filtered. A spokesperson for Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), a firm specialising in the issue of Internet filtering in China, said that only the IP address of servers hosting Typepad weblogs had been blocked. The website http://www.typepad.com remains accessible.

Several sources have also reported that the American website Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org), which had earlier drawn attention to the filtering of Typepad, was itself blocked in late March. A Slashdot spokesperson told RSF that the site was regularly made inaccessible by the authorities, adding, "If [the website] really is blocked, I assume it is because Slashdot and other similar forums promote open discussion, a plurality of views, freedom of thought, etc. These things don't mix well with totalitarian bureaucratic systems."

Meanwhile, Internet users have also been launching initiatives to foil this type of censorship. A group of webloggers recently set up a website designed to help editors of censored weblogs (http://www.sinosplice.com/adoptablog). RSF hails this initiative and calls on webloggers worldwide to mobilise in defence of free expression for their Chinese counterparts.