Jonathan Watts of Britain’s Guardian newspaper said military personnel working in Niufei Village, Pingwu County, told his reporting team they were not allowed to video the soldiers en route to a school buried in a landslide. “I told them they should be proud of what they are doing, and they should let the people know,” [...]

Sami Sillanpaa, correspondent for the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, said two days after the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan a half dozen foreign correspondents were barred at a roadblock from entering the town of Beichuan near the epicenter. While the foreign journalists were held up, Chinese journalists got on a minibus and were allowed through. [...]

Four policemen pushed around and detained for 90 minutes a Finnish TV reporter who was on her way to Beichuan near the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake. Katri Makkonen of the Finnish broadcasting company YLE said police harassed her after local Foreign Affairs officers told her they had an order not to allow foreign correspondents [...]

SICHUAN PROVINCE: POLICE CONFISCATE PRESS CARDS, TRY TO FORCIBLY CONFISCATE TAPES OF QUAKE DISASTER May 13, 2008– Police confiscated press cards from a TV team in Juyuan and tried to forcibly seize video the team took of the Sichuan earthquake disaster area. At 3:00 a.m., 12 hours after the earthquake struck, a police officer who [...]