A BBC camera crew reporting in China
was attacked and later forced by police to apologise and sign a confession for
trying to conduct an “illegal interview”, one of its reporters has said.
John Sudworth, a journalist with the
BBC, and his team were attempting to interview a villager in rural China who
claims her father was killed during a land dispute with the government. As they
walked towards her house, a group of men blocked their way, pushed Sudworth and smashed and
snatched the crew’s cameras.
“As soon as we arrived in Yang
Linghua’s village it was clear they were expecting us,” Sudworth wrote in his account,
referring to the woman the BBC wanted to interview.
China has one of the most restrictive press environments in the world
and is ranked 176th out of 180 countries for press freedom, according to
Reporters Without Borders, ahead of only Syria, North Korea, Turkmenistan and
Eritrea.
Chinese publications face severe
reporting restrictions and penalties for publishing stories the government dislikes,
which range from articles being deleted to dismissal.
After the BBC’s cameras were smashed,
the crew left the village but were chased and surrounded by 20 men whom the
journalists described as “thugs”. Uniformed police and two members of the local
government later arrived and “under the threat of further violence”, BBC reporters were forced
to sign a confession apologising for “behaviour causing a bad impact” and
delete some of the footage.
While
foreign news outlets can report on a wider range of topics, journalists often
face harassment from police and government officials. Chinese security forces typically use plainclothes
operatives to disrupting reporting of sensitive events, especially outside trials of human rights
activists.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of
China condemned the harassment.
“The FCCC calls on the Chinese
government and police to take steps to prevent foreign reporters who are
legally allowed to work in China from being subjected to such violence and
intimidation,” it said in a statement. “This violent effort to deter news
coverage is a gross violation of Chinese government rules governing foreign
correspondents, which expressly permit them to interview anybody who consents
to be interviewed.”
This was not the first time Sudworth
has encountered interference
while reporting. In November, as China held elections for local representative
bodies, Sudworth was met by a group of silent men who formed a wall in front of
the home of a woman he was attempting to interview.
The men eventually pushed the BBC crew
back to their car and they were forced to scrap the interview. Sudworth
returned after the elections and was able to speak to the interviewee
unmolested.
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