Group Seeks U.S. Funds to Break Chinese Regime’s „Firewall“

A group of human rights advocates have urged the United States government to fund a coalition working towards tearing down the great ‘firewall’ of China.

[Michael J. Horowitz, Hudson Institute]:
“We’re here to announce the submission to Secretary Clinton of two letters.”

The director of Hudson Institute’s Project for Civil Justice Reform, Michael J. Horowitz, announced on Tuesday at a press conference in Washington, DC.

The letters, signed by human rights campaigners from around the world, call on Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton to grant funds to the Global Internet Freedom – or GIF – Consortium.

Established in 2006, GIF is a non-profit organization that’s helping Internet users—mainly in China—break through Internet censorship. It’s mostly operated by volunteers who are adherents of Falun Gong—a spiritual movement which has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

The Technical Director of the GIF Coalition, Dr. David Tian, says GIF has become the largest anti-censorship project in the world.

[Dr. David Tian, GIF Technical Director]:
“Currently GIF is basically responsible for almost 90% of anti-censorship traffic over the world. Most of our users are from China and Iran, and each country, each of them has about half a million to a million users (per day).”

The United States Congress approved 30 million dollars in the budget this year to tackle Internet censorship in China, Iran and other closed countries.

Hudson Institute’s Michael Horowitz says the U.S. government should live up to its promise.

[Michael J. Horowitz, Hudson Institute]:
“We expect to keep the pressure on the State Department to make its actions live up to its words, it’s as simple as that.”

Dr. Tian says the bottleneck to GIF’s efforts is its server capacity. With government funding, the coalition could upgrade its facilities from 1.5 million, up to 50 million users per day.

Foto: NTDTV