LOS ANGELES—For leaking personal information and continuously assisting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Internet censorship and the persecution of dissidents, Yahoo is being sued again in Los Angeles.

On February 21, members of a number of parties including the China Democratic Party, China Social Democratic Party and the New People's Party, issued an announcement that they have filed a lawsuit against Yahoo once again in San Francisco Federal Court and a related document was also mailed to Yahoo headquarters on February 20.

The announcement said that a list of people including China Social Democratic Party member Wang Xiaoning, and New People's Party member Guo Quan, were persecuted by the CCP because of Yahoo. Although Wang and Yahoo had reached an agreement outside of court, Yahoo did not openly apologize. What happened to Wang and Guo are not isolated cases, at present more than 60 people have been persecuted because Yahoo provided their personal information to the CCP.

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China Social Democratic Party secretary Liu Yinquan, China Democratic Party founder Zheng Cunzhu, the China Interim Government President Wu Fan and several renowned Chinese democratic activists attended the press conference on February 22.

Zheng said that although an agreement had been reached for the cases of Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, there were many more being prosecuted because of Yahoo. According to the indictment, more than 60 people were persecuted because Yahoo had been provided their personal information, it is our duty to file a case for them.

The second reason is that after publishing several open letters appealing for political reform by former Nanjing Normal College associate professor Guo Quan. His name was blocked by China Yahoo and China Google. Google lifted the ban after media reported the case, but Yahoo did not. Zheng indicated that, since the chief officer of China Yahoo Yang Zhiyuan had expressed openly in congress that Yahoo had promised to "support freedom of speech and privacy globally," the censorship on Guo Quan is hard to explain. Therefore, it is hoped that this lawsuit would again remind Yang, and once again remind the international community of the persecution of the China Democratic Party in Mainland China.

Zheng also mentioned that China Democratic Party member Li Zhi had been arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison in 2003 because his registration and email information had been provided to the Chinese police by Yahoo and he is still in prison.

Wu Fan issued an open letter on Guo Quan's behalf stating that, as a citizen of the People's Republic of China, starting November 14, 2007, Guo published eleven open letters to the leaders and all fellow citizens in the hope that the country would consider political reform. But shortly after he published the first letter, he was blocked by GOOGLE.CN and CN.YAHOO.COM, meaning his name would not be found anywhere on the above websites. This lawsuit is to request that Yahoo not only immediately lift the ban on the Internet but also publicly apologize.