Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to Zoom calling for the company to choose a side: American principles and free-speech, or short-term global profits and censorship. His letter comes after Zoom chose to close the accounts of prominent U.S.-based critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for discussing the Tiananmen Square massacre, claiming the closures were necessary to “comply with local law.”
“These oppressive ‘local laws’ are what Party officials use to oppress more than a billion people, including more than one million Uighurs who have been forced into slavery. These ‘local laws’ are what China is using to crack down on protesters in Hong Kong who just want the basic liberties they were promised by international treaty.”
Senator Josh Hawley
To Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Senator Hawley continued, “Trading American values for Beijing profits never ends well. The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of inviting American companies into its borders, only to steal proprietary information and technology and then repurpose that data for its own use. When you censor for the Communist Chinese Party, you may think it benefits you, but the only one who will benefit in the long run is the Chinese Communist Party.”