By FRANK CHING
Business Times - 16 Apr 2008
NEW, liberalised regulations governing the work of foreign journalists were introduced by China last year, but it is clear that there are many problems in the implementation, some of which are being deliberately introduced by officials, including the police.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC), in a press release in January, agreed that the new regulations had 'improved overall reporting conditions for foreign journalists', but said that there had been more than 180 reports of journalists being obstructed in their work in the 12 months since the introduction of the new rules.
Although the new regulations do away with cumbersome procedures such as applying for permission before conducting interviews, in practice there are still very severe problems.
With the current problems surrounding Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited areas of neighbouring provinces, reporting has become even more difficult as there is a ban on travel to an area that constitutes one-sixth of the country.
Some of the incidents reported by the FCCC clearly violate not only professional norms but also endanger the life and safety of individual reporters. For example, last September, Reuters correspondent Chris Buckley was 'tackled to the ground, kicked in the back, and punched by more than a dozen thugs while investigating a claim about an illicit detention centre in Beijing for petitioners coming to the capital to air grievances'. The reporter was attacked while leaving the centre in Beijing, and his notes, a mobile phone and camera were seized. According to the FCCC, the thugs 'pinned him to a chair' and one man threatened 'to kill the reporter'.
The same month, a reporting team from Britain's Channel 4 was 'assaulted by thugs and then detained by police following interviews with petitioner 'inmates' at an illegal detention centre in the outskirts of Beijing'.
And, in November, Swiss television correspondent Barbara Luthi and her cameraman and local assistant were roughed up and detained for seven hours in Shengyou Village, Dingzhou County, Hebei Province. One of their tapes was erased by the authorities. The Swiss team had been interviewing villages at the site of a land dispute that in 2005 resulted in a pitched battle that claimed six lives.
These instances of official interference in the attempt by journalists to do their work are terrible enough. What is even worse is that the spirit of the regulations is constantly being violated in an even more pernicious way.
Now that reporters have been told that they do not have to apply for approval before interviewing anyone willing to talk to them, the pressure is being put on potential interviewees. The FCCC has reported that 'willing interviewees have been beaten, intimidated or detained before, during or after interviews'.
For example, an Asian print journalist reported that while in Hubei province, 'a local party secretary and propaganda department official showed up at the house of a villager I was interviewing'. Subsequently, the people who had been interviewed reported that 'they were chided for talking to a foreign journalist (and) for 'disgracing their own country'. Another blatant example of an official thwarting the carrying out of professional journalistic activities occurred last Sept 29 when a labour rights activist, Zhang Zhiru, was detained while he was being interviewed by two Finnish journalists. The police warned Mr Zhang not to tell the foreigner 'unnecessary things'.
In August, Brice Pedroletti, a reporter for France's Le Monde newspaper, visited the home of exiled human rights advocate Rebiya Kadeer in Xinjiang, but the family told him it was 'inconvenient' to talk. One source told Mr Pedroletti that he had been questioned for two hours after speaking to the reporter.
Thus, the new regulations have shifted pressure from foreign reporters onto Chinese citizens. By telling foreign journalists they can talk to whomever they want, the Chinese authorities act and sound as though they are making the life of reporters a little easier. However, pressure on potential Chinese sources not to talk to foreign reporters makes the Chinese government appear hypocritical.
In some ways, the new regulations make the lot of journalists harder. After all, what journalist wants to endanger people who are willing to talk to him and to provide information that he needs for his stories?
The basic problem is that Chinese citizens still do not enjoy freedom of speech, despite a constitutional guarantee of basic freedoms. As long as the government treats journalists as spies and shadows them wherever they go and questions their sources, there will be no genuine freedom for foreign correspondents to operate professionally, and no genuine freedom for Chinese citizens to disseminate information or to voice their opinions.
The writer is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator
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