Members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement have filed a lawsuit in US federal court against networking company Cisco Systems accusing it of working with the Chinese government to track down Falun Gong supporters.
The spiritual movement is banned in China. On 20 July 1999, the Chinese government declared the Research Society of Falun Dafa and the Falun Gong organisation under its control to be outlawed for having been engaged in illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardising social stability.
The lawsuit filed in US federal court in the northern California city of San Jose is seeking damages and an order that would prevent the company from supplying the Chinese government with computer-networking equipment to build "Golden Shield" Internet technology which is used to spy on Falun Gong supporters.
A lawyer representing the devotees said Cisco "designed, supplied and helped maintain a censorship and surveillance network known as Golden Shield" used by Chinese officials to track down Falun Gong practitioners and then punish them which included torture and death.
The case is being handled by the Washington-based Human Rights Law Foundation, which has handled other legal issues for Falun Gong followers, on behalf of residents in the US and some Falun Gong survivors from China.
Cisco has refuted the claims, saying it will "vigorously defend" itself.
"Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customise our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression," the California-based firm told AFP.
"Cisco builds equipment to global standards which facilitate free exchange of information, and we sell the same equipment in China that we sell in other nations worldwide in strict compliance with US government regulations."
Last week, eight Chinese pro-democracy activists who are residents of New York sued Chinese search engine Baidu for violating the US constitution in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
The activists say that Baidu helps the government censor political expression.The suit, which the plaintiff’s lawyer claims is the first-of-its-kind, also names the Chinese government as a defendant.
