Police detained a reporter and photographer from Associated Press and told them not to cover protests by parents who lost children in the May 12 earthquake.
Reporter Cara Anna and photographer Ng Han Guan arrived around 9:30 a.m. at the courthouse in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, where parents were protesting shoddy school construction. Police grabbed their arms and pulled them up the stairs of the courthouse. They were taken to the lobby to wait for officials from the local government’s Foreign Affairs Office. The official arrived and lectured the journalists not to cover such protests. The official said people were bound to have different opinions following the quake but the reporters should pay no attention to such things. The journalists were released about half an hour later.
Police in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, detained a reporter and photographer from Kyodo News as they were covering a story on parents who were trying to file a lawsuit over the deaths of students at a collapsed school.
About ten policemen surrounded the photographer, grabbed him by his arms, and took him into a courthouse. The parents gathered in front of the building protested, and asked the officers why they were detaining a foreign journalist. Several minutes later authorities pulled the reporter away from the crowd and took him into the courthouse. A local government official told journalists they were not under arrest, but were being taken inside the courthouse for their own safety.
The two were allowed to leave about an hour later. Chinese authorities prevented the more than 150 parents from filing a lawsuit over the deaths of students at a school that collapsed in the May 12 earthquake, allegedly due to shoddy construction.
