AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

Letter of Appeal from the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

3 February 1999

Your Excellency:

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the largest organization of natural and social scientists in the United States, and the world's largest federation of scientific organizations, with 143,000 individual members and 275 affiliated groups. Our AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility was formed in 1976 to protect the human rights of scientists and to deal with issues relating to scientific freedom worldwide.

I am writing to you on behalf of the Committee to express our dismay regarding the two-year prison sentence imposed on Chinese software engineer Lin Hai on 20 January 1999. The Committee previously wrote to you on 10 December 1998 to express our concern about Lin Hai's arrest on 25 March 1998 on the charges of "inciting to overthrow state power" for providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to a US-based, pro-democracy newsletter.

The Committee is further troubled by reports indicating that Lin Hai's trial was conducted in secret in Shanghai on 4 December 1998. We regret that Lin Hai has become the first person in China to be charged with using the Internet for the purpose of political subversion. We fear that the harsh sentence against Lin Hai may have been imposed as a warning to other Internet users.

The Committee is also disturbed by reports indicating that the Chinese government has set up a special task force to monitor the Internet, and service providers must register all users with the government.

We respectfully point out that the imprisonment of Lin Hai constitutes a serious violation of international human rights standards as enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted without opposition by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 and to which the Peoples Republic of China is an adherent. They include the rights to life, liberty, and security of person; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; and the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This last right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.

We call on you to use your good offices to assure the immediate and unconditional release of Lin Hai on the grounds that he was arrested merely for exercising his human rights. We urge your government not to interfere with electronic communications for the purpose of monitoring or controlling free expression.

Sincerely,



Irving Lerch, Chair
AAAS
Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

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