Yahoo Settles with Chinese Dissidents

On Tuesday, Yahoo Inc. settled a lawsuit that two jailed dissidents in China had filed against it. In the lawsuit, the jailed Chinese dissidents, journalists Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, had alleged Yahoo was partly responsible for their detention and subsequent torture by Chinese authorities, and should therefore shoulder some degree of accountability.

The prelude to the settlement came about last week. Officials from Yahoo went to Capitol Hill to offer their apologies to the families of the jailed dissidents. The executives were also verbally reprimanded by U.S. lawmakers for their role in getting the dissidents into jail.

After the apologies at Capitol Hill, the two parties – Yahoo executives as well as the families of Chinese dissidents, settled the matter. Filing a joint stipulation in the U.S. District Court for the California Northern District, which is where the dissidents had earlier filed their suit, the two parties agreed to dismiss all claims, with prejudice.

The dismissal is based on a private settlement between the two parties. As part of that settlement, Yahoo would also foot the legal bill of the plaintiffs. No other details related to the settlement are available in the joint stipulation.

Though the settlement has been reached, the dissidents would remain in jail, as that is something that cannot be resolved by legal settlement in the U.S. considering the dissidents are lodged in Chinese prisons.

Speaking on the occasion, Theresa Harris, the international justice project director for World Organization for Human Rights USA, said with the lawsuit out of the way, the dissidents’ families could now concentrate on getting them out of jail in China. The organization mentioned here is the one that represented the interests of the plaintiffs.

Yahoo, through a written statement, has agreed to provide all financial, humanitarian, as well as legal support to the dissidents’ families. The company also said it was creating a separate entity, a humanitarian relief fund, which would be made available to members of other dissident families.

However, settling this one lawsuit is not the answer to the actual problem that Yahoo and other online companies can face: being compliant with local laws and regulations in different geographies that may actually result in human rights violations and abuse of freedom of speech.

The settlement comes about after Yahoo had, in August, asked the court to dismiss the case, stating that the United States was not the proper venue for the case to be tried. The argument of the plaintiffs was that in providing information to the Chinese government relating to the two dissidents, which culminated in their arrest and torture, Yahoo had violated a series of US as well as international laws.

In their suit, the plaintiffs asked for a range of damages, and also an injunction that prevented Yahoo from providing any other such information that could lead to human rights violations and freedom of speech abuse in future. They also demanded the courts to direct the defendants to help actively in getting the detained dissidents released at the earliest.

Yahoo had to face much flak at Capitol Hill last week for its role in the whole episode. The Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Tom Lantos had a lot to say to Yahoo CEO Yang and also Michael Callahan, general counsel for the defendant regarding his testimony to Congress last year about the arrest and confinement of the dissidents.