China: Wu Hao released · Global Voices
John Kennedy

Following nearly five months in prison, blogger, documentary maker and American permanent resident Wu Hao has been released, as noted in a July 11 post on his sister Nina's blog:
刚刚得到家里电话, 被告知皓子出来了.谢谢大家的关心,但他需要清静一阵子.
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Set up soon after her little brother's arrest by Chinese authorities, Nina's blog has served as the centerpoint in the campaign to have Hao released. English translations of each of her posts recounted the hostility Nina received in repeated unsuccesful attempts to gain any information on her brother's whereabouts. Frustrated and fearing how the news would affect her parents’ health, in late May she wrote that her brother had been denied access to a lawyer.
Support was strong across the blogsphere, with hundreds of fellow bloggers posting on Nina and Hao's story, as well as putting up Free Hao Wu tags. Support was there from some mainstream media, with the Wall Street Journal chipping in just a week ago, and a piece written in The Washington Post by Global Voices Online co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon coinciding with Chinese president Hu Jintao's visit to America:
“Hao turned 34 this week. He personifies a generation of urban Chinese who have flourished thanks to the Communist Party's embrace of market-style capitalism and greater cultural openness. He got his MBA from the University of Michigan and worked for EarthLink before returning to China to pursue his dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He and his sister, Nina Wu, who works in finance and lives a comfortable middle-class life in Shanghai, have enjoyed freedoms of expression, travel, lifestyle and career choice that their parents could never have dreamed of. They are proof of how U.S. economic engagement with China has been overwhelmingly good for many Chinese.”
Several members of the U.S. Congress wrote letters of concern on Hao's behalf. We are also grateful for some diplomacy – both quiet and open – conducted elsewhere.  Late last week free speech group Reporters Without Borders announced a successful lobbying attempt aimed at the European Parliament, which ratified a resolution on freedom of expression on the internet. Included in the resolution is a list of nine imprisoned bloggers and cyberdissidents, one of which is Hao.