Six to seven plainclothes thugs prevented a four-person ARD TV team from approaching the home of Yuan Weijing in a Shandong province village. It was the second attempt in two weeks by Germany’s ARD to talk with Yuan, wife of imprisoned blind human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng.
During the first attempt, police had arrested Yuan’s brother shortly before the team arrived. In the more recent incident, two of the thugs had stones in their hands and threatened the journalists. During the brawl that ensued, the cameraman fell to the ground. One of the thugs hit the camera with a stone, but didn`t destroy it.
The team was not beaten but the journalists were threatened, insists ARD correspondent Jochen Gräbert. Although nobody was injured, he says, “these guys were like fighting robots. It was a dangerous situation.” After the team retreated to the outskirts of the village, Yuan came out of her house but was prevented from speaking to the media.
Shanghai police held Ola Wong of the Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet and a Canadian freelance photographer for one hour while they were covering protestors in Shanghai’s People’s Square who oppose plans for a magnetic-levitation train project.
Hundreds of Shanghai residents turned out to demonstrate against a plan to extend the existing maglev train line to the city center over concerns that it would emit electromagnetic radiation and pose a health hazard. Wong said police took the journalists away from the reporting scene to a nearby police station, allegedly for doing ‘illegal reporting.’
“Their pretext was that I didn’t bring my passport with me. We were released after one hour. The photographer got a shove in the back from one police officer but other than that they behaved OK.”
People’s Liberation Army soldiers held a crew from a Japanese TV channel for three hours after they filmed buildings near a barracks in Beijing. Although the crew was in a public area, soldiers took them away for questioning, split them up, and forced them to write a self-criticism before they were allowed to go. “We had to mark it with a finger print. They treated us like criminals,” the reporter said.
As China enters the year of the Beijing Olympics, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) has identified hot spots where journalists have experienced repeated violations of China’s new reporting regulations.
“While the year-old regulations have improved overall reporting conditions for foreign journalists, we are particularly troubled by repeated violations in several areas — including in Beijing and Hebei — where plainclothes thugs have intimidated or physically assaulted foreign journalists,” says FCCC President Melinda Liu. “Police should investigate the attacks, and assailants should be prosecuted.”
The new temporary reporting regulations that came into effect on Jan. 1, 2007 state that foreign journalists may travel freely and interview anyone who consents during the Olympic period, ending after the Paralympics in October. Previously, reporters needed permission to do interviews and risked being detained if they did not get it. Since January 1, Foreign Ministry officials, in some cases, have made extensive efforts to persuade local authorities to free detained foreign correspondents.
However, in addition to reports of easier travel and better access to officials, the FCCC received more than 180 reports of reporting interference* in 2007.
At an illicit detention center in a Beijing suburb there were two cases of violence against foreign correspondents. Over a dozen thugs surrounded one reporter, tackled him to the ground and kicked him in the back. They then pinned him to a chair and one man made a death threat, adding to the tension. The correspondent was investigating claims the building was used to imprison petitioners coming to the capital to air grievances.
There were three separate incidents of detentions in Shengyou Village, Hebei Province, where six villagers died in a clash over a land dispute in 2005. One reporter said she was confronted by a dozen men she believed were plainclothes police. They knocked her to the ground and erased one of her video tapes. Local foreign affairs officials later facilitated her release.
A number of journalists reporting in Xinjiang and Tibet said they were followed or detained, or their sources were intimidated. “The FCCC is concerned local authorities are still preventing many Chinese citizens who agree to be interviewed from talking to foreign journalists,” said Liu.
The FCCC is also concerned by central government attempts to compel media organizations to drop certain interviews or news stories. Several organizations reported to the FCCC that they, and in some cases their overseas headquarters, were warned in advance to cancel scheduled interviews with Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian or the Dalai Lama, or face “the consequences.” It was not known how Chinese authorities learned of these planned interviews.
Despite the problems foreign correspondents continue to face in the field, the FCCC believes the new regulations have been a positive step that have brought China closer to meeting international standards. More than 20,000 foreign journalists are expected to visit Beijing and report on the Games. The FCCC welcomes Minister of the State Council Information Office Cai Wu’s suggestion, made at a December 27, 2007 news conference on China’s policy of opening wider to the world, that the temporary regulations might remain in effect even after the Beijing Olympics. The FCCC hopes that as a lasting legacy of the Games the regulations will be made permanent, and will be fully implemented nationwide, including in Tibet and Xinjiang.
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