BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Human Rights Google Admits Collusion in Tibet Censorship

'We were Evil' Google founder admits here; with boycott information and phone numbers to call to protest Google's actions.

Google has totally surrendered to China.

Wondering why this is in the Human Rights folder?

Is freedom to Google now becoming a new expectation of 21st century human rights?

Has the United Nations been informed of this breech of freedom?

Google as a private organization has the freedom to do what it wants. Most of the multinationals are operating in China and know well about human rights violations there. They all are in this together. Google is being singled out because it censored all anti govt. search results in China.

But all are equally responsible. those who shout loudest against google use many Made in China products. talk of double standards.

Huh??

This has exactly what to do with universally recognized standards of 'human rights'?

If you hold google responsible and very rightly so, then what about thousands of companies operating in China which has one of the most dictatorial regimes? No human rights are respected in China. Why absolve other companies?

What makes you think we ARE absolving other companies?
Chinese ones are somewhat harder to get hold of though...

Every single Festive Christmas decoration I have seen in UK stores so far - every single one - bears the inscription, "Made in China".

Communism at its best....

Although I'm totally behind freedom of speech and information, and a big fan of Amnesty International, I'm thinking this campaign is way off base. You're trying to blame internet search engine companies for Chinese repression in Tibet and human rights violations? That's a stretch of the imagination.

A link to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/intlinst.htm.

No mention of internet search engines or Google.com.

I suggest that if you want to improve the human rights of people you can find far more malevolent perpetrators of oppression than Google.com.

This has to do with Google's image. It has cultivated a image of not doing anything wrong for corporate profits. So when google launched itself in China and agreeed to all the conditions, those who belived in google felt cheated.

Now no body belives that google will do right at the cost of profit. google lost all its goodwill in a day. Had google not accepted Chinese conditions in search of anti China material, google would have found a big majority admiring it and using its services loyally. After that day, yahoo is slowly catching up with google.

Greetings!

Just to clarify, the purpose of this forum is to provide an outlet of discussion for human rights, abuses, violations and any aspect thereof. Are there more damaging representations and/or violations? Assuredly, and I invite you to post them as you will.

However. Censorship as a rule is always a violation of human rights because it represents repression of a people. As a fan of Amnesty International, you likely are aware on July 20 of this year, they launched a global campaign specifically against internet repression. The campaign aims to claim back the web as a force for change in the face of an increasing willingness on the part of technology companies to aid censorship and repression.

And thus.

How do you make technology companies stop censorship in countries like China? there should be some mechanism. Because it is free market economy from where they operate.

When free and democratic governments themselves sign treaties and trade in hundreds of billions of dollars with repressive regimes, is there any hope?

It's a daunting task admittedly. Even one person boycotting or refusing to use a company's services whose ethics were in complete discord with their own (such as Google in this post, but there are many, many others) is one person more. But you've raise a good point in general, and touched upon a very real reason why so many people don't get as actively involved with Human Rights as they inherently feel that they should be: What kind of difference can one person possibly make?

Siddhartha-The Buddha was one person.
Mahatman Gandhi was one person.
Nelson Mandela is one person.

People have asked me in earnest if I really think I can make a difference with this, and of course I am in no league with the aforementioned above, but is that ever any reason not to do something? I suppose I see it like a forest. One tree does not a forest make, but collectively, a thicket you shall have. If each individual did something - anything - together we could change the world.

And yes, there is always hope.

As long as there's life, there's hope.