Yahoo! under fire over human rights case
Yahoo! has been accused of being complicit to human rights abuses in China, due to the sharing of information with the Chinese government, a US court has heard.
The World Organisation for Human Rights is suing Yahoo! after it claimed that the web giant provided information to the Chinese government that lead to the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese journalists and government critics.
Countering the claim, Yahoo! said that it must comply with the local laws of the countries that it operates in, and that it supports free speech, however it did admit that information given to the Chinese government did lead to arrests.
Yahoo! is not alone in being criticised for its complicity with the Chinese government's strict controls on the freedom of information online, as search giant Google has admitted to restricting access to politically sensitive sites and information.
In May Google's censorship policy came under fire at its annual shareholder meeting when a proposal was put forward to stop its censorship of search results in repressive countries.
