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China dissident's wife: "Yahoo betrayed my husband."

On the newly-redesigned Wired News site today, this powerful lead story by Luke O’Brien:

Early one Sunday morning in 2002, a phone rings in Yu Ling’s Beijing duplex. She’s cleaning upstairs; her son is asleep, while downstairs, her husband, Wang Xiaoning, is on the computer. Wang writes about politics, anonymously e-mailing his online e-journals to a group of Yahoo users. He’s been having problems with his Yahoo service recently. He thinks it’s a technical issue. This is the day he learns he’s wrong.

Wang picks up the phone: “Yes?”

“Are you home?” asks the unfamiliar voice on the other end.

“Yes.”

The line goes dead.

Moments later, government agents swarm through the front door — 10 of them, some in uniform, some not. They take Wang away. They take his computers and disks. They shove an official notice into Yu’s hands, tell her to keep quiet, and leave. This is how it’s done in China. This is how the internet police grab you.

Five years later, Yu, 55, sits in the dining room of a small house in Fairfax and weeps softly. She is a slight woman — 100 pounds and barely 5 feet tall in slippers. Her eyes betray her exhaustion; but she is determined, too. She carries a thick stack of notes with her, and she has scrawled more on her left hand.

“Yahoo betrayed my husband and deprived him of freedom,” Yu says through a translator, her voice trembling. “Yahoo must learn its lesson.”

Link to “Yahoo betrayed my husband.”

Image (courtesy Yu Ling / via Wired News): “Yu Ling and her husband Wang Xiaoning are shown in a 1978 family photo. Wang was arrested in 2002 for using a Yahoo Groups account to advocate for open elections, a multi-party system and separation of powers in the Chinese government.”

Previous posts on BoingBoing:

  • Jailed Chinese dissident’s wife to sue Yahoo for ratting out her husband
  • Yahoo rats out Chinese reporter to Beijing, writer gets 10 years in jail
  • China: gov to expand “Great ‘Net Firewall,” censor web even more
  • Report: Yahoo helped jail another Chinese ‘net dissident, Li Zhi
  • Journalism school won’t return Yahoo’s controversial $1M grant
  • Report: Yahoo implicated in 3rd China dissident case
  • Yahoo could stay in China and stop sending its users to jail
  • Harsh words for US tech firms from House at China ‘net hearings
  • Report: verdict confirms Yahoo helped jail China dissident #2
  • Xeni’s LAT op-ed: war, blogs, news, and profit.
  • Amnesty Int’l. confronts Yahoo over jailed Chinese reporter
  • NPR “Xeni Tech”: Yahoo may have aided in jailing of second China writer
  • Tech firms blasted over China policies on Capitol Hill
  • HK lawmaker: Yahoo unit had role in Shi Tao’s jailing
  • Chinese activist to Jerry Yang: You are helping to maintain an evil system
  • Exit mobile version