Wang Xiaoning
Chinese dissident
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wang Xiaoning (simplified Chinese: 王小宁; traditional Chinese: 王小寧; pinyin: Wáng Xiǎoníng) is a Chinese engineer and dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People's Republic of China for publishing pro-democracy material online using his Yahoo! account. In September 2003, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
In 2007, his wife filed a lawsuit against Yahoo! for providing Wang's private information to the authorities; the suit was settled out of court. Wang was released in August 2012.
Arrest and imprisonment
In 2000 and 2001, Wang, who was an engineer by profession,[2] posted electronic journals in a Yahoo! group calling for democratic reform and an end to single-party rule. He was arrested in September 2002, after Yahoo! assisted Chinese authorities by providing information used to identify him. In September 2003, Wang was convicted a charge of "incitement to subvert state power" and sentenced to ten years in prison.[3]
Lawsuit against Yahoo!
On 18 April 2007, Xiaoning's wife Yu Ling and the World Organization for Human Rights USA sued Yahoo! under the Alien Torts Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) and Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 106 Stat. 73 (1992) in federal court in San Francisco, California, United States.[4] Described as potentially "an important test case", the suit was one of the first attempts to hold a corporation responsible for overseas human rights violations.[1] President George W. Bush's administration opposed the suit.[1]
Wang Xiaoning was named as a plaintiff in the Yahoo! suit, as was Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist detained and convicted on state security charges for emailing a description of the Chinese government's instructions to journalists for the upcoming anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.[5][6] Shi had also been identified by information provided by Yahoo![7] The World Organization for Human Rights USA executive director, Morton Sklar, stated: "Yahoo is guilty of 'an act of corporate irresponsibility ... Yahoo had reason to know that if they provided China with identification information that those individuals would be arrested."[1]
After unsuccessfully seeking to have the suit dismissed,[8] Yahoo! settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.[9]
