Foreign journalists working in China face continued harassment despite new reporting rules brought in for the Olympic Games this summer, the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents Club of China said Tuesday.
China relaxed restrictions on foreign journalists at the beginning of 2007, exempting them from having to apply for permission to travel and conduct interviews. The change was part of the country's pledge to increase media freedom, which helped Beijing be picked as host of the 2008 Olympics.
But the journalism group said it had received more than 180 reports of interference in reporters' work over the past year, including beatings and intimidation in Beijing and other places.
Sensitive areas such as Tibet and China's western Xinjiang province, home to the Uygur minority, still remain difficult places to work because of official obstruction and harassment, the group said.
Before the rule change, reporters had to apply for permission to travel outside major cities as well as to conduct interviews.
"While the year-old regulations have improved overall reporting conditions for foreign journalists, we are particularly troubled by repeated violations in several areas," the group's president, Melinda Liu, said in a statement.
In one case, two reporters were assaulted while investigating a detention center in a Beijing suburb where Chinese were illegally held for coming to the capital to voice grievances. More than a dozen thugs surrounded one reporter, knocking him to the ground and kicking him in the back.
Journalists working in Tibet and Xinjiang were followed or detained, or their sources were intimidated, the group said.
The government decree announcing the relaxed reporting rules said they will expire next Oct. 17, after the Summer Olympics and the Paralympic games that follow.
The government's grip on domestic media remains tight, dictating what can be reported and limiting any open discussion about democracy, religious freedom or material considered politically subversive.
Source: AP News
