Earlier this week, news broke that Facebook had succumbed to pressure in Vietnam to censor posts deemed “anti-state” in the country after two state telecommunications firms seriously impeded traffic to its site by taking its servers offline.
One of three citizen journalists who went missing in Wuhan while covering the Coronavirus outbreak has returned with a new video. But Li Zehua, in this one, oddly, praises the police, countering criticisms against them following his disappearance.
In early April, the UN announced plans to partner with Tencent, one of China's leading surveillance and censorship enterprises. Safeguard Defenders was among several groups that raised human rights concerns about this plan.
Safeguard Defenders, with 87 other NGOs and parties, submitted evidence and recommendations to an Australian parliamentary committee set up to debate the adoption of a 'Magnitsky Act' to target human rights abusers worldwide.
The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic has ruled that eight Taiwanese who are accused by Beijing of telecom fraud cannot be extradited to China.
Safeguard Defenders have nominated rights defense lawyer Wang Quanzhang and his wife Li Wenzu, who is also a human rights defender, for the 2020 Tulip Human Rights Award.
Safeguard Defenders assisted former journalist Peter Humphrey with filing an ethics complaint on February 26 with the World Health Organization over the continued appointment of a journalist complicit in rights abuse in China as one of its goodwill ambassadors.
Safeguard Defenders sent an open letter to the UK's TV-regulator Ofcom today [25 February 2020], requesting an investigation into allegations that China Global Television Network (CGTN) is violating UK broadcasting law and Ofcom's own Guidelines, that prohibits any media organization from being owned or controlled by a political body, and for its license to be revoked.
As China battles to get a grip on the highly infectious Coronavirus epidemic that emerged in Wuhan in December, it has also brought out a well-worn tool – public forced confessions -- to control the debate on the disease and humiliate and punish those who “spread rumours” or take advantage of any panic.
