Shi Tao

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For other uses, see Shitao.

Shi Tao (Simplified Chinese: 师涛; Traditional Chinese: 師濤; pinyin: Shī Tāo; born 25 July 1968) is a Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was imprisoned for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site. He had previously worked for the business daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News) in Changsha.

1 Brief history
2 Arrested and imprisoned
3 Reactions
4 References
5 See also
6 External links
7 Notes

[edit] Brief history

Shi Tao was born in Salt Pond county of Ningxia province in 1968. He studied at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He graduated in July of 1991, and was married in 1994.

On October 18th, 2005, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced that Shi Tao was one of four winners of the 2005 CPJ International Press Freedom Awards.^[1] The Committee's website states he will be officially presented with the award when he is released from prison.^[2]

In March of 2006, he was given the Vasyl Stus Award. On November 28th 2006, he was given the Golden Pen of Freedom Award by the World Association of Newspapers.

[edit] Arrested and imprisoned

In 2004 at the age of 37, Shi Tao was working for the Contemporary Business News in Hunan province, China.

On April 20, 2004, the Chinese government released the Number 11 document "A notice concerning the work for maintaining stability" (关于当前稳定工作的通知). In the document, it warned journalists that overseas pro-democracy Chinese dissidents may come back to mainland China during the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 on June 4th, which would affect the politico-social order's stability. It asked all news media to not report anything regarding the so-called "June 4th event", Falun Gong or people calling for politico-social change. Shi used his private Yahoo! email account, and sent a brief of the document to an overseas web site called Asia Democracy Foundation [1].

When the Chinese government found out, it demanded the sender's personal information from Yahoo!'s Hong Kong office. Yahoo! turned the information over without asking what it was for. Shortly thereafter, Shi Tao was detained on November 24, 2004. The Chinese authorities confiscated his computer and documents without showing any proper permit or document, and warned his family members not to talk about it with others. He was formally arrested on December 14.

His lawyer, Guo Guo-Ding (郭国汀), famous for taking human rights cases, stated that the search and seizure and subsequent arrest were illegal. As a result, his license to practice law was suspended for one year by Shanghai's Department of Law. He was later put under house arrest, and one of his co-workers had to take over the case.

On March 11, 2005, Hunan Changsha People's Middle Court held its first hearing secretly. It lasted for two hours. Shi Tao's mother and brothers came all the way from Ningxia to Changsha, but they were not permitted to go inside and observe. After the hearing was over, Shi was permitted ten minutes of private time with his family members. Fifteen days later, he was sentenced to prison for ten years, and will lose his political rights for two years on the charge of leaking state secrets.^[3]

On June 2, 2005, the Hunan Superior Court rejected his lawyer's arguments and denied his appeal, keeping the original sentencing. Shi's mother, Gao Qinsheng, alleged "serious procedural defects" in her son's case, but his appeal was rejected without a hearing.

[edit] Reactions

The incident sparked a controversy about the business practices of Yahoo!, whose Hong Kong arm provided technical information connecting the message and email account with Shi Tao's computer. Yahoo! was criticized by Reporters Without Borders for acting as a "police informant". The United State Congress held a hearing about this and other similar incidents with representatives from Yahoo!, Google, and MSN, etc.

Other cases involving political prisoners in the People's Republic of China where information has been provided by Yahoo! are Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun.