Un-muzzle the dragon.

So we all know about China's abysmal human rights record, but is everyone aware of just how censored the average Chinese citizen's access to information is?

A new campaign has been launched by Amnesty International recently to actively combat these issues in a public forum. It works to inform about human rights and censorship issues occurring in China right now. This is especially important in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, as China must be on their best behaviour, and present its best face. If we help to bring these issues to light, they will have much less of a chance of being ignored now rather than after the games when this leverage will disappear.

The campaign is called Uncensor. This is from the web page:

About the Uncensor China campaign

"There are many abuses taking place in China today. Our campaign focuses on these four key areas:
- Unwarranted Internet and media censorship
- The death penalty
- Repression of human rights defenders, and
- Torture and detention without trial"

The website has a cool function where you can enter in censored search terms like "SARS" and "Tienanmen" in Chinese, in Chinese Google and Yahoo search engines to see what comes up in comparison with entering the same in English over here. I further tested this censorship by copying and pasting the Chinese characters into the outside-China engines to see what the differences in results were. Try it out yourself, it's interesting (find this function on the right hand sidebar of the Uncensor homepage).

When it is back online (it is currently undergoing maintenance), http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/ is another great site which tests websites that are blocked through Chinese servers.

What can you do? Inform yourself first, then spread the word however you can, and sign the pledge on Uncensor. Help to flood the Chinese servers with censored search terms.

Personally I have great hopes for China's future in the world, so I am doing my bit to encourage the land of the dragon to discard the chains that hold it back in the eyes of the developed world. Am I being ethnocentric? I don't think so, being Chinese has nothing to do with being restricted in the information you can access. This is a relatively modern phenomenon in a culture that has been around for thousands of years. China was once arguably the most knowledgeable and well-informed culture on Earth; I would like to see it be so again.

The Chinese government loves its people, and sees this censorship as protecting them from destructive elements. This isolation will not work forever though, as it is like a bamboo cage that flexes. The people can glimpse through the bars at the world as it really is, and as they become aware, the less confident they will be that their government's love is protecting them instead of limiting them.

Yours with hope,

Jetsam