Reporters Without Borders reveals state secrets in reaction to Gao Yu’s sentence

By releasing these documents, Reporters Without Borders is showing that independent journalists and activists inside China will continue to send censored information abroad and will continue to expose the Communist Party’s lies and propaganda. The internal memos and directives obtained by Reporters Without Borders, which came from the State Internet Information Office and other departments, show how the authorities stepped up their control of the Internet at the end of last year. The documents – which include censorship directives to news media, memos circulated within Internet companies that cooperate with the censors, and summaries of meetings – testify to the scale of the party’s efforts to shape public opinion in accordance with its political vision. “We are appalled by this verdict and sentence, which ignored the proof of Gao Yu’s innocence supplied by her lawyers,” said Benjamin Ismaïl, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific desk. “Today, the Chinese authorities ensured that a lie prevails so we would like to remind them of a truth: for each journalist or blogger they convict and turn into a political prisoner, they create ten new defenders of freedom of information and media freedom, ten new activists who will defend the public interest by revealing what the authorities want to cover up. Ismaïl added: “It was thanks to one of these journalists that we obtained these internal Chinese Communist Party documents.” After the sentence was announced, Gao’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said he would appeal. The authorities accused Gao of sending an internal Communist Party document that was “secret” to a foreign news organization although the document, identified as “Document No. 9,” had already been posted online. Yesterday, on the eve of the announcement of the sentence, Reporters Without Borders called on the authorities to free Gao and drop all charges against her. Gao, who won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 1997, has been held since 24 April 2014. Extracts from the messages to Internet censors and directives to news media and various news websites are available here. Reporters Without Borders will soon post all the documents it obtained. RSF also welcomes Deutsche Welle’s announcement, made in response to today’s verdict against Gao Yu, to suspend cooperation negotiations with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. RSF had criticized the cooperation plans because of CCTV’s role as a part of China’s repression machinery against critical journalists. After public criticism, Deutsche Welle had step by step watered down its original announcements: In September 2014, the broadcaster spoke of a “deepening of cooperation” with CCTV and “possible co-productions in the fields of music and business”. In a December 2014 interview, in contrast, DW chairman Peter Limbourg said co-productions would be limited to media coverage of activities of the German national youth orchestra and a joint project at the Beethoven Festival in the city of Bonn.