Journalist’s home apparently entered by unknown people without permission

Jan 18, 2016

Philip Khokhar,
 Danish Broadcasting Corporation

Coming home from Taiwan where I had covered the presidential election, I entered my apartment in Beijing where my windows were opened. Since they are very heavy, this doesn’t happen by coincidence. The only extra key for my apartment is in the reception of the compound and I don’t have cleaning in my apartment when I’m not present in the apartment. According to my contract the management is only allowed to let anyone enter without my permission, in case of emergency. My housing management denies opening the door for anyone and says that heavy wind opened my windows, which is practically impossible. After denying that there is a video camera in front of my apartment, they promised they would go through the recordings. Later they said they couldn’t see anything in the file footage. They will not let me see the recordings without the permission of Beijing police. Nothing appears to have been taken from the apartment. This intrusion and violation of my private space also happened in October 2014, when I had been to Hong Kong to cover the demonstrations.