Police and local officials who refused to identify hemselves followed for nine hours, harassed and briefly detained three foreign journalists, their Chinese assistant and a source traveling with them in Hebei Province. The media were trying to report on water diversion to Beijing.
The journalists – one each from the U.S., the Netherlands, and Spain – first noticed local officials at a diversion canal project near Changgucheng village, where a woman asked what they were doing and if they had come to see the mayor. After leaving the canal, the reporters saw two unmarked cars which followed them for 90 minutes to a reservoir, where they were denied access. The journalists then attempted to access a second reservoir the Wangkui but were stopped by 15 people who blocked the road with a table, saying the road has been closed for four years.
After two hours of negotiation and showing their press cards to the only uniformed officer present (who was the only person who showed an I.D. to the media) the journalists were allowed to leave. Despite being promised they wouldn’t be followed, the media were followed to the entrance of the expressway to Beijing.
The journalists had phoned the Foreign Ministry and International Press Center in Beijing for assistance when local officers said they wouldn’t allow the party to leave the blockaded area. The IPC said it could not help. Foreign Ministry officials did not call back as promised, though one responded several days later.
Plainclothes police in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, turned Irish Times journalist Clifford Coonan and a photographer away from the home of parents whose children died in the May 12 earthquake. Later authorities further harassed Coonan, intimidated his Chinese sources in a bid to prevent them from giving interviews, and compelled the photographer to erase photos.
The day after being denied access to the parents’ home, Coonan returned to Dujiangyan at the parent’s urging to accompany them as they filed a petition at the local courthouse. Government officials in Chengdu had given Coonan reporting passes, but local police in Dujiangyan were still blocking access and widely intimidating sources.
“We were told to leave by a polite court official,” said Coonan. “Then as we were leaving, two extremely gruff uniformed police approached the car and made the photographer wipe his memory card.”
Coonan said a high fence and police in riot gear surrounded the Juyuan Middle School, which collapsed and killed hundreds of students and was made famous by a visit from Premier Wen Jiabao in the early days of the disaster. For nearly two weeks after the quake, it remained open to the public and press and was the site of many impromptu memorials by grieving parents.
The Wall Street Journal reported that, during the second week in June, police barred one of its correspondents from entering neighborhoods around four collapsed schools and ordered him to leave three such towns, including Xianger.
The WSJ said one of its reporters was sought out by Wang Guoqing of the State Council Information office, who said he was troubled to hear foreign media were being denied access and had flown to Sichuan to resolve the situation.
Local officials and police followed for three days and harassed a reporter and photographer from the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende, preventing them from interviewing miners and local residents about a coal mine disaster in Shanxi province.
Ten uniformed officers blocked the journalists from getting near the mine outside of Xiaoyi. The officers, who refused to show identity cards, would not answer questions about the presence of police and emergency vehicles at the mine. When the journalists attempted to interview truck drivers and other local residents, officials approached them and said a propaganda official would come to meet them. That meeting was followed by two more days of negotiations and dinners with officials who promised to show them a coal mine and allow them to interview miners.
Eventually, the correspondents gained access to an empty mine scheduled to open in 2009. Officials then drove the team to a road blocked by a giant mud puddle, telling them it was the county’s only road to a coal mine. (The county has 184 mines).
“Had they said `No, we don’t want to show you a coal mine,’ we would have gone elsewhere on our own. Instead, they constantly delayed [us] and we never saw anything,” recalled the journalist. “They were not threatening, they were just professionally obstructing our work.”
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China is concerned about the recent increase in reporting interference cases in Sichuan.
Coming a month after the earthquake, the tightening restrictions in some areas run contrary to the openness that was widely praised in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Entire towns, such as Dujiangyuan, have been declared off-limits to
foreign reporters, particularly those who have attempted to report on the collapse of schools. Some parents of children who died in those schools say they have been warned by police not to speak to overseas news organisations.
In the past week the FCCC has received reports that at least seven foreign media teams have been stopped or temporarily detained, most of them at the Dujiangyuan courthouse. Others report being blocked at checkpoints or followed on the grounds of “safety” and “traffic regulations.” Several of these incidents are detailed on the FCCC website.
Some areas, such as Beichuan, are still relatively open. But overall reporting conditions have deteriorated. In the early stages of the
relief operation, foreign journalists were allowed to travel relatively freely upon showing their ministry of foreign affairs press
passes. Now, they are required to obtain special photo-passes from the Sichuan foreign affairs department and also extra permits from some local counties, such as Deyang, as well. Although the risks of aftershocks, floods and landslides are far lower than a month ago, police increasingly restrict movement on the grounds of “safety”.
FCCC members greatly appreciated the opportunity to report relatively freely in Sichuan in the first two weeks after the earthquake. Access was crucial to understanding the situation, seeing the work done by relief teams and understanding the needs and circumstances of the victims. Reporters were willing to take risks to report this.
Now, however because of the political sensitivity of the school collapses, some authorities are tightening controls. The detentions at Dujiangyuan and Juyuan are not in keeping with the transparency that, in the wake of the tragedy, Premier Wen Jiabao promised ‘will never change’. It also runs contrary to new Olympic reporting regulations that allow foreign reporters to interview any organisation or individual with their prior consent.
The FCCC has asked the government to re-open restricted areas and to allow quake victims to speak freely to foreign reporters. The club is happy to share details of the incidents with the central government and Sichuanese authorities and to discuss ways in which the situation might be improved.
