I knew I’d be super-busy in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. But I had no idea I’d be dealing with so many detentions of foreign correspondents.
As well as being Newsweek’s bureau chief, I’m the president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, which represents the professional interests of foreign journalists working here. Occasionally I’ve been phoned by colleagues who’ve run into trouble, usually out there in the hinterland. Some have been detained for many hours; others have run into relatively minor hassles. I and other FCCC board members try our best to help because, to one degree or another, we’ve all been there.
Just this past week, a handful of foreign correspondents were held against their will in three separate incidents. The detentions took place in localities as far apart as Hebei province adjoining Beijing and Xinjiang, China’s Muslim-majority region all the way out there in Central Asia. Two incidents took place on a single day, last Tuesday.
You may be wondering: What does this have to do with the 2008 Games? When Beijing was bidding to host the Olympics, Chinese authorities promised foreign media total freedom to report. On Jan. 1, 2007 China’s regulations governing foreign media reporting were liberalized for the Olympics period. The new rules did away with some of the most serious constraints on foreign correspondents’ activities, especially the earlier requirement that we had to get permission from local authorities before working in the provinces. The new rules were a significant step forward.
But some grassroots apparatchiks still haven’t gotten the message. One common thread running through the journalists' accounts of their recent detentions is that many local authorities just don't get the spirit of the new regulations (or in the case of Xinjiang even claimed not to know about them, requiring a Beijing-based Foreign Ministry official to spend quite a long time on the phone explaining them).
Here are summaries of the Nov. 20 detentions, compiled by one of my colleagues, the Guardian's Jon Watts. We're all hoping Chinese authorities lift their game on implementation of the new rules.
1) Barbara Luethi, correspondent for Swiss TV and her cameraman and local assistant were roughed up and detained for seven hours in
Shengyou Village, Dingzhou County, Baoding City, Hebei Province on
20th November. One of their tapes was erased by the authorities.
They had been interviewing villagers at the site of a land dispute in
2005 that resulted in a pitched battle that claimed six lives.
"I have been interrogated by police before, but this was on a whole
different scale," said Luethi. "It is the first time I have been
physically beaten." She said six cars drove up containing 10-12 men,
who claimed to be local villagers. She believes they were plain
clothes police. Two of their cars did not have number plates. They
were "quite brutal", twisting her arm painfully, grabbing a camera and
bags. In the struggle that followed Luethi fell to the ground.
The issue was eventually resolved when the men who detained them
called local foreign affairs bureau, who were "ok".
2) Swiss photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer were
detained for three hours in Wuchang, the southern area of Wuhan. Residents were relating details of a property dispute in which they’d been beaten up and threatened. Braschler and Fischer were only talking to locals. They didn't even have a chance to even take a camera out of the car when uniformed police arrived. They were held in a police station off Heping road. There was no violence, no property confiscated. But they were held back when they tried to return to their car.
It was the third time the couple have been detained during their travels around China. They said it was the most unpleasant experience. "They were much rougher in the way they treated us," said Braschler. "After two hours, we said we’re just going to leave. Then the chief of police came. He was very unfriendly and threatened to detain us for 12 hours if we didn’t go back to police station. He seriously threatened us… Eventually someone from the police foreign affairs department came, said all was fine, and wanted to invite us to lunch to clarify things. We said no. Then they got tough again. They said they want to check all our film, cameras and notebook. I said we have two options - either we are free so we can go. Or we are arrested so we call the Swiss embassy. Eventually they let us go."
