Microsoft should not make itself an accomplice of China's censors

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has called on the Microsoft company not to be an accomplice of Chinese censors. "This US company should not permit the results they deliver to the Chinese search machine, Baidu, to be filtered by China's state censors," demanded Ulrich Delius of the STP's Asia section. "Our human rights organization is directly affected, since access to our homepage is frequently blocked by Chinese censors because of our efforts of behalf of persecuted minorities."

On Monday, Microsoft agreed to a close cooperation with the Chinese search engine Baidu. For example, the US firm will provide the Chinese company with English-language results from their search engine, Bing.

"A company that stands up for the freedom of the Internet worldwide should not allow itself to be misused to help the Chinese government declare 400 million Internet users in China incompetent," asserted Delius. "China's arbitrary censorship is the largest attack on freedom of information in the world." Roughly 40,000 censors have been commissioned by the Chinese authorities solely to filter Internet content that is critical of the regime.

"With the Chinese search engine, users search in vain for information about Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, Falun Gong, house churches, and the democracy movement. These incriminated terms describe the focal points of our efforts concerning China – thus it is no wonder that our human rights work is also censored."

Furthermore, tens of thousands of bloggers are paid by the authorities to influence discussions on the Internet along Communist party lines. These informal operators are supposed to shape public opinion and help improve the battered image of the party.

For years Microsoft has been loudly criticized by human rights organizations and politicians for its controversial efforts in China. The company has been accused of helping China to censor bloggers by supplying certain software products. Representatives in the US congress have called on the company to "support human rights, not tyranny." "To this day, Microsoft has not provided a credible explanation of how it will take an active role in promoting freedom of information in China," stated Delius. "Apparently the company wants to hang on to its lucrative business with China at any cost."