Internet Dissidents

Journalists, webmasters, and students who have been jailed by their governments for simply expressing their views via the Internet should be freed immediately. Human Rights Watch marked World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2003 by launching an online campaign to profile Internet dissidents, and to encourage the international community to pressure governments for their release. (See the Human Rights Watch press release.)

The following profiles are of writers, webmasters, and students who have been jailed by their governments for simply expressing their views via the Internet. The countries they represent—Tunisia, China, and Vietnam—all promote electronic communication as a vehicle of modernization, and yet subject it to draconian regulation in an effort to quash the dissemination of popular political dissent and protest.

These people need your help now. Some have been subjected to torture, some are ill, and all suffer substandard prison conditions for no other reason than expressing their views, always peacefully, sometimes irreverently.

Take a moment to read about them, and then click to “What You Can Do” and write letters on their behalf to the people who are in a position to secure their release.

Huang Qi
Liu Di   Released

Zouheir Yahiaoui   Released

Dr. Nguyen Dan Que
Le Chi Quang
Nguyen Khac Toan    (Released on January 26, 2006)
Pham Hong Son  (Updates)

What You Can Do

1. Inform yourself. Read the profiles and related information at http://wwww.hrw.org/advocacy/internet/dissidents/. Other websites that report on cyberdissidents include http://www.amnesty.org/, http://www.internet.rsf.org/, http://www.dfn.org/, and http://www.cpj.org/.
2. Pick two or more prisoners, and write letters on their behalf.
3. Let us know about your activism by writing: webadmin@hrw.org
4. Sign up for future updates on human rights issues and similar campaigns by writing: hrw-update-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com
5. Ask others you know to do the same.

More on Free Expression on the Internet

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