Dissident Ning Xianhua sues Verizon, claiming Yahoo’s handover of private data to China led to prison and torture
- Lawsuit alleges that Yahoo cut deal with Beijing to hand over emails of pro-democracy activists in exchange for access to Chinese market
- Ning, a participant in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989, escaped to the US in 2016
A US-based Chinese dissident has sued the Verizon Communications subsidiary that owns Yahoo, citing allegations that former Yahoo executives handed over private user data to the Chinese government, resulting in the activist’s detention and prosecution.
Ning Xianhua, who is described in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday as a participant in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989, “suffered brutal beatings and torture for years” in China as a result of Yahoo sharing data taken from his email account with authorities in exchange for market access, his lawyers said.
Ning, 69, a labour rights activist, was convicted for subverting state power in 2004 and served seven years in prison. After leaving China in 2016, he sought asylum in the United States, where he lives in New York.
Government officers involved in his case never disclosed to him the source of the information used in his prosecution, Ning said. But a confidential prosecutorial memorandum that was used in Ning’s case and recently obtained by his lawyer in China had revealed Yahoo’s participation in “effecting his arrest, torture and imprisonment”, said Kevin Parker, a lawyer representing Ning.
The memorandum “lays out the contents of Mr Ning’s emails in incredible detail and suggests that the only source of that information was Yahoo given that the [People’s Republic of China] could not have obtained that information from other sources,” said Parker, who declined to share a copy of the document.
Ning’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, is based on claims under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which permits non US-citizens to seek restitution for human rights abuses conducted overseas with the assistance of American entities.
US and Britain criticise China’s jailing of ‘cyber dissident’ Huang Qi
Yahoo was acquired in 2017 by Verizon, which runs the internet company through its subsidiary, Oath Holdings Inc. Also named as defendants in Ning’s case are Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and former CEO, and Terry Semel, another former executive.
A Verizon spokesman declined to comment, saying that the company had not “seen the suit”. The spokesman did not respond to a follow-up request that included a copy of the lawsuit.
Yang did not respond to a request for comment. Semel could not be reached for comment. (Yang, who left Yahoo in 2012, sits on the board of Chinese internet company Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post.)
The action against Verizon follows a similar civil case against Yahoo in 2007, when a group of Chinese activists accused the company of aiding their prosecution by authorities in China, including Shi.
After scrutiny from rights groups and US lawmakers, Yahoo executives apologised to relatives of those who had been imprisoned, but denied that they knew of the political nature of the cases against the individuals when they handed over the data.
That case was settled on undisclosed terms in November 2007, shortly after a heated congressional hearing at which Yahoo executives, including Yang, were harshly criticised by lawmakers for acquiescing to Beijing’s requests.
“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” Tom Lantos, a Democratic US representative from California, told Yang.
