Incident report: Urumqi, Xinjiang

May 30, 2014

Two reporters from The Associated Press reporting in Urumqi following an attack on May 22 were followed around, asked to leave Uighur neighborhoods and barred from conducting interviews. A reporter was at a hospital interviewing survivors of the attack on May 23 when doctors showed up and told her she was not allowed to talk to the patients. On the same day, she and a videojournalist visited the Uighur neighborhood of Erdaoqiao where they were followed around by a man the entire time. When the reporters moved to another neighborhood, a policeman and street wardens asked them to leave.

On May 24, the two journalists were in a neighborhood speaking to neighbors of a family who lost their son. A neighborhood security guard checked their identifications but did not stop them from reporting. As they were leaving the neighborhood, two police officers approached them to check their identification and were followed by propaganda officers who told them not to conduct interviews. The propaganda officers later trailed them to prevent anyone from speaking to them on North Park Street, and two more police officers showed up when they were having their lunch to check their identifications. The reporters were also at some point filmed by the authorities.

This report was filed to the FCCC on May 30, 2014.