Amnesty International campaigns against net repression

Amnesty International has taken up the cause of repressive use of the Internet.
BBC reports that Internet users are being urged to stand up for online freedoms by backing a new campaign launched by human rights group Amnesty International:

Snippets:

"Amnesty is celebrating 45 years of activism by highlighting governments using the net to suppress dissent."

"The campaign will highlight abuses of rights the net is used for, and push for the release of those jailed for speaking out online."

"Called Irrepressible.info, the campaign will revolve around a website with the same name. While the human rights group has run separate campaigns about web repression and the jailing of net dissidents before now, Irrepressible.info will bring them all together. "

"Chinese journalist Shi Tao is serving a 10-year jail sentence for sending an e-mail overseas which detailed the restrictions the Chinese government wanted to impose on papers writing about the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre."

"Hi-tech firm Yahoo helped identify the journalist via his e-mail account. Amnesty is calling for the jailed journalist to be released immediately. "



"The Amnesty campaign will seek to get net users to sign a pledge that opposes repressive use of the net. The pledges will be collated and presented to a meeting of the UN's Internet Governance Forum that is due to meet in Athens in November 2006."

"Amnesty wants to get people using an icon in e-mail signatures or on websites that contains text from censored sites."