Click on the button above to download a letter that you can print, sign and send to the Governor of the Hunan Provincial.

Shi Tao is a Chinese poet, writer and journalist. He is a recipient of the 2005 CPJ International Press Freedom Awards, the 2006 Vasyl Stus Award and the World Association of Newspapers 2006 Golden Pen of Freedom Award.

He is also serving 10 years in prison for sending an e-mail from his Yahoo! account.

In 2005, Shi Tao was sentence to ten years imprisonment for sending an email which included information on the government response to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Shi Tao sent the email to the US using his Yahoo account. The Chinese authorities accused him of "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities".

According to the Court transcript, the evidence that led to Shi Tao’s sentencing included account-holder information provided by US internet company Yahoo.

Shi Tao was accused of sending an email summarizing an internal Communist Party document to a foreign source. The document instructed all Chinese news media how to handle coverage of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. It instructed journalists not to report on what they labeled the “June 4th event.”

Imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression, Amnesty International considers Shi Tao a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty also condemns Yahoo! for willingly handing over Shi Tao’s details to the Chinese authorities, thus directly contributing to Shi Tao’s arrest and imprisonment.

On February 22nd 2007, this year 22-year old blogger Abdul Karim Nabeil Suleiman (pseudonym Kareem Amer) was sentenced to four years in prison after using his online blog to criticize the country's top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university, and President Hosni Mubarak, whom he called a dictator. He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country’s reputation", "incitement to hate Islam" and "defaming the President of the Republic".

Here in New Zealand criticisms of the government and educational institutes are made every day… just listen in to friends and family conversations and you’d be surprised how often those criticisms are made. What won’t surprise you at all is that such comments are made without fear of imprisonment, ill-treatment or torture – a right denied Shi Tao and Abdul Karim Nabeil Suleiman.

Amnesty International considers Abdul’s sentence as “yet another slap in the face of freedom of expression in Egypt," and considers him to be a prisoner of conscience who is being prosecuted on account of the peaceful expression of his views." Join Amnesty in calling for Kareem’s immediate and unconditional release.

Click on the button above to go to an online petition, that will be collated and sent to the Egyptian Interior Minister.