Employee of a Large Telecommunications Company Writes to CEO Regarding Nortel Networks' Helping China Build "The Great Firewall"

October 22, 2001

I would like to bring to your attention to an important issue, which affects the well being of our company and many lives in China.

Nortel Networks, one of the largest telecommunications company in the world, was criticized last week for assisting China build the "Great Firewall" and assisting in human rights abuses in China, according to a report released by a Montreal based, government funded human rights group, Rights and Democracy (see very thorough and impressive 40-page report and numerous media reports from Reuters, Globe and Mail, SCMP below).

I am calling your attention to this issue because our company, a leading telecommunications equipment company, does a lot of business in China, and also because this is an issue close to my heart.

My husband and I have been practicing Falun Gong for 2 years and have benefited tremendously from the practice. We simply cannot comprehend the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths and over 100,000 arrested and imprisoned--many for accessing information over the Internet.

The husband of a personal friend in Toronto, Li Zhang, a senior structural engineer in Beijing, was arrested by the Department of Public Security and sentenced to 3.5 years in prison. His "crime" was downloading Falun Gong information from the Internet and sending letters to friends. My friend Li has not seen or heard from her husband for 7 months and I share her pain.

Profit without social conscience is not good for society or for the firms themselves. For example, look at the free fall of Nortel recently; having lost another $3.5 billion last quarter, it laid off tens of thousands of employees. For our company's sake and for the sake of humanity, we should neither directly nor indirectly assist China to commit such crimes.

Thank you for your consideration. Please pass this on to other people in our company who might be interested or who are in a position to do business in China. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Notes:

(1) Reuters, CBC Radio, Montreal Gazette, Globe and Mail (editorial), South China Morning Post etc. have already reported this. The reports can be found at:
http://go.openflows.org/

(2) The 40-page report can be found at :
http://www.ichrdd.ca/111/english/contentsEnglish.html