China
Foreign journalists harassed for reporting at protest sitesPosted Mar 9 2011
A foreign journalist has her ID checked by a Chinese policeman in Beijing. Sunday, March 6, 2011. (AP Photo: Ng Han Guan)
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China’s Forbidden City is living up to its name.
Over the last two weeks, foreign journalists have been barred from reporting at specific locations in Beijing. Inspired by the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, an anonymous Internet post called for anti-government protests outside a McDonald’s in the capital city and other sites across the country. The government prevented any protests from taking place through the use of heavy security and has now targeted journalists trying to report from these locations.
On Feb. 27, plainclothes police beat up a Bloomberg cameraman outside the McDonald’s. A BBC correspondent and his team were also forced into a police van the same day. On March 7, police officials questioned many foreign journalists, The New York Times reported.
Reporters from the Times, AP, CNN and “at least a dozen other journalists and photographers were visited in their homes over the weekend and repeatedly warned not to cause trouble,” the Times article said.
The Guardian reported that “a group of European and Japanese journalists … were held by police for two hours,” while reporting from a protest site in Shanghai. Journalists have been told that their visas will be revoked unless they obtain official permission to report from certain places.
Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi denied police involvement in the Bloomberg journalist beating, The Wall Street Journal reported. The article quoted him as saying, “There is no such issue as Chinese police officers beating foreign journalists.”