The FCCC records and publicizes cases of harrassment against journalists and their sources.
Hong Kong journalists attempting to cover the sentencing in Chengdu of writer/activist Tan Zuoren were hassled and shoved by police. One of the group reported:
Nine Hong Kong reporters arrived at the Chengdu courthouse around 7 a.m.
We wanted to interview the lawyer and relatives of Sichuan earthquake activist Tan Zuoren outside the courthouse, before the trial was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Around 9 a.m. police ordered us to enter the courthouse. When we refused to go, they used physical force, and shoved us into a holding room.
One reporter who was carried in was slightly injured in a scuffle.
The authorities said they wanted to check our media credentials. Around 10 a.m., after the verdict was issued, the authorities returned our credentials and released us. We went outside the courthouse and tried to interview the lawyer about the five-year prison sentence for subversion, but uniformed police kept pushing us around. They said we were violating regulations by blocking the sidewalk. Despite the disruptions, we were eventually able to complete the interviews.
Correspondents working for Swiss television were harassed by local officials in Yunnan for several days and blocked from doing their work, despite having official invitations and permission to film. Sources and a
Chinese assistant were also intimidated. Two correspondents tell the story below:
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During the Eid holiday that began Nov. 27, two journalists traveling separately to Kashgar, Xinjiang, were harassed by police and foreign affairs officials — one of whom demanded they leave the city, despite reassurances from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing the city remains open. In both cases, local residents were under apparent pressure to watch for and monitor foreign journalists.
Italian journalist Beniamino Natale, traveling with a photographer friend, attempted to check in at the Seaman Hotel but was refused and sent to Qini Bagh, told it was the only hotel allowed to host foreign reporters. Natale recalls: “The morning after my arrival a policeman was waiting for me in the lobby. He asked me if I was on holiday. I said yes.”
“He said Kashgar has a particular situation and there are particular rules. I told him that I am a guest of China holding a J visa and that I respect the law of China. The day after, as we were walking in the old city, he came shouting after me with another guy. I told him he was abusing his power and that I am a guest of China, and went on walking and shooting photos with my friend.”
An officer from the local foreign affairs office showed up, was very polite and told the journalist the same thing. Later, Natale hired a local guide and noticed on the way back to the hotel, the guide followed him. The guide admitted that he was instructed by police to follow Natale and report back. Earlier in the week, Natale was blocked from entering the Id Kah Mosque to watch prayers for the Kurban Festival, when the mosque and square are packed with people. Natale was barred, while his photographer friend with a tourist visa was allowed in.
“In my view the important thing is that you get more freedom of movement with a tourist visa than with a J visa, a situation similar to that of other authoritarian countries like North Korea and Burma,” said Natale.
In a similar case the same week, an American journalist traveling with a British photographer managed to escape police notice several days in Kashgar by not using her passport, which contains a journalist visa, at the hotel. On the final day she was forced by a cancelled flight to stay an extra day and check into the International Hotel on her passport. Within 20 minutes of check-in, five men (two uniformed police, two without uniform and one from the local foreign affairs office) showed up at her hotel room demanding to know why she was in Kashgar and when she was leaving.
The officials left her room after the journalist repeatedly told them it was improper for five strange men to beat on a single woman’s door at 10pm, with no complaint that she had done anything wrong. The men went to the lobby, where they used a copy of her passport in the automated airline check-in system to check her in for the next day’s flight to Kashgar. The hotel night manager later admitted he had to call the police when he saw the journalist visa on her passport.
“They gave no reason for the disturbance, and seemed to back off when I told them I was calling the Foreign Ministry,” she said. “Yet it was clear this was standard practice when a journalist checks into a Kashgar hotel.”
LOCATION: Beijing
TYPE OF INCIDENT: Violence, broken equipment
TOPIC: Oct. 1 National Day
NATIONALITY/ORGANIZATION: Kyodo news agency/Japan
The Japanese Kyodo news agency has reported that unidentified authorities in Beijing stormed the hotel room of three visiting journalists, beat them and damaged two computers. The agency says authorities stormed into the journalists’ room on Friday evening, kicked and beat the journalists about their heads, and forced them to kneel on the ground.
The incident occurred on a rehearsal day for the Oct. 1 military parade through central Beijing. More than a dozen FCCC members have reported receiving phone calls in recent weeks warning them not to photograph and/or interview people in or around Tiananmen Square in the weeks leading up to the anniversary. Several foreign news organizations were ordered not to film or photograph rehearsals, but no clear, written regulations have been issued by the Foreign Ministry and journalists have been given varying instructions.
Following is the text of Kyodo’s English news report:
BEIJING, Sept. 18 Kyodo – Chinese authorities assaulted three Kyodo News journalists in Beijing on Friday night when they were covering a rehearsal of a military parade the country will stage in the city on Oct. 1, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The authorities kicked one reporter and two cameramen and hit their heads to make them knee down at a room of Beijing Hotel, which faces Chang’an Avenue that runs east to west past the Tiananmen Square area where the National Day celebrations will be centered.
The authorities, who stormed into the room around 8 p.m. without notice, destroyed two computers by throwing them out of the room to the corridor.
China’s Foreign Ministry ordered news organizations not to take photos when the country conducted a rehearsal Sept. 6, but the ministry has not issued such an order since then.
Just as the previous rehearsal, tanks, armored vehicles and missile-carrying vehicles traveled the central Beijing in the Friday event.
It will be the first time for China to hold a military parade since 1999, when it celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding.
LOCATION: Urumqi
TYPE OF INCIDENT: Violence, detained for three hours, broken equipment, confiscated tape
TOPIC: Protests
NATIONALITY/ORGANIZATION: Hong Kong/television
“At around 3.30pm, we were interviewing Han Chinese protestors on Hongqi road. There were a few thousand protestors and about 1,000 paramilitary. At a road junction (police) had put up barricade. The protestors walked close. They were yelling slogans, calling for (Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan to quit.”
The police fired tear gas, and the situation grew chaotic.
“I was separated from my cameraman. He was holding his camera, filming. Five-six paramilitary went up to my colleague and grabbed him, pushing him to the ground. His hands were tied to his back with rope, along with the TVB cameraman and reporter. The three of them were pressed to the ground.
They told them they had their State Council press passes in their pockets, but the officers didn’t listen and continued to beat them. They were beaten on the head repeatedly, on the leg. Then, the three of them were taken to the police station and questioned.
Our camera was confiscated. When they returned the camera around 5.30pm, we realized they had taken our tape. An officer went up to my colleague to apologize for the incident. We asked for our tape back but they said they don’t know what happened to it. They let us go. ”
