Internet Policy Is an American Mask

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton likes to say to audiences around the world: “To become a successful country in the twenty-first century, you must choose to make a greater contribution to the cause of human rights.”* After Google released a statement last year against Chinese censorship, Clinton presented America’s new policy — encouraging each country’s government to ensure the Internet rights of its citizens.

China has continuously been the stage for America demonstrating how it upholds democracy, freedom and human rights. Even so, hypocrisy dominates it all: Many examples of contradictions are embedded on the aura of an idealized American national image — China is only a drop in the bucket. The sound of similar questions is not uncommon in Latin America and right now in the Middle East. Much of what the American government says regarding ideal flattery, in fact, has long stopped at America’s borders. But the people have gradually discovered that so-called freedom, ideals and human rights are only a mask the American government wears when it attains the foreign affairs policy goal of imperialism.

Regarding her declaration on Internet freedom, Clinton gave people this impression: The suppression of freedom of speech and Internet freedom will never play out in the United States — at least it won’t occur during the Obama administration’s term — yet, not long after Clinton first gave her speech on Internet freedom, she was caught in an awkward position. She discovered that she herself must face the unrelenting barrage of WikiLeaks. This one organization possesses more than 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, as well as other secret information on more than two hundred countries and regions concerning American policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iran. Ryan Gallagher, a London freelance journalist, said: “Releasing the documents exposes American abuses of power, corruption, lies and war crimes.”

To prevent WikiLeaks from disclosing secrets, the United States State Department launched overwhelming suppressive efforts. The related censored news was published as headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. Even the American Library of Congress also worked hand in hand with the State Department to prevent readers from logging on to the WikiLeaks website from their reading rooms. There were even members of the United States Congress who brazenly proposed to assassinate WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange.

Hillary Clinton said: “We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.” Since the American vision is freedom and democracy, why does it come up with this nonsense? Western political thought today doesn’t view freedom of speech as an inevitable outcome of democracy, besides, does it see it as a political demand? Aren’t even emerging countries also appealed to like this? But the reality is that the American government threatened to punish all the people associated with WikiLeaks. This clearly exposed the real attitude of the American leadership toward freedom of speech and freedom of the Internet.

Since he was caught ten months ago, an additional twenty-two charges have now been proffered against American Private Bradley Manning, who is suspected of providing the 250,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. After the Obama administration began allowing every corner of the world to be full of campaigns for democracy, this kind of repressive attitude is undoubtedly extremely irritating. Suppose that Manning and Assange were Chinese citizens and they engaged in a similar activity in Beijing — then Obama and Clinton would probably have long ago nominated them as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.