PEN is alarmed by evidence that information supplied by the Internet Service Provider Yahoo! Inc. was used to convict journalist, poet and dissident writer Shi Tao.

The prosecution of Shi Tao was based on an email Shi sent to the editor of a New York-based Website detailing media restrictions imposed by the Chinese authorities prior to the fifteenth anniversary of the June 3, 1989 crackdown on the pro-democracy protests. Shi Tao was sentenced on April 27, 2005 to ten years in prison for “leaking state secrets abroad”.