Digital Journalism Review | Netizens launch White House petition to ban architects of the Great Firewall from entering US

Chinese netizens enraged by online restrictions pick personal targets as they expose more programmers working on the Great Firewall and petition the US government to deny censorship supporters’ entry to the United States.

A document entitled “The Great Firewall (GFW) Contributers List” was uploaded to code-sharing site GitHub.com by an anomymous online user with username “yefuchs”  on Tuesday morning.

The list contained more than 180 names, many written in Pinyin without using Chinese characters. Only seven people on the list had job titles and only two of them – Fang Binxing, professor at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (who is often regarded as the “Father of the Great Firewall”) and Han Weili, professor with the Shanghai-based Fudan University – have clear employer information.

It remains unclear who created and uploaded this list to GitHub.com but it is pretty sure the list is targeting many people who claimed to have helped build the GFW.

Han claimed on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-style social media platform, on Saturday that he had never “contributed any code for or been involved in” the GFW project.

The last time Han posted a message on Sina Weibo was on Sunday afternoon, when he said he was invited by authorities to join them for coffee on Monday.