BEIJING -The top editor of one of China's boldest newspapers has been dismissed in what observers said was a move to strengthen Communist Party control over the media. Yang Bin, the editor-in-chief of the Beijing News a tabloid that has often reported on official missteps and misdeeds was removed on Wednesday, Chinese journalists and media experts said. The precise reasons for Yang's dismissal...
New York, December 28, 2005–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday's court decision upholding the conviction of Internet writer Zheng Yichun on charges of "inciting subversion" for his articles criticizing the government. The Liaoning Supreme People's Court rejected Zheng's appeal, making it more likely that he will serve a prison term of seven years. "Zheng has done nothing more...
BEIJING - A Straits Times reporter arrested in China on charges of spying will have his case referred to the prosecution department within days, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang said on Wednesday. Mr Tsang had brought up the case of Ching Cheong, who was based in Hong Kong, during meetings in Beijing with President Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. Mr Ching, 56, was first detained in April in...
A Chinese researcher for the New York Times was indicted Friday for revealing state secrets to the newspaper and on a lesser charge of fraud, a move that should send the case to trial within six weeks, his lawyer said. The indictment signified a decision by prosecutors to proceed with a trial of 43-year-old Zhao Yan, after 15 months of investigation by the State Security Ministry during which Zhao...
China is sending a Chinese journalist working for the New York Times to trial charged with exposing state secrets, his lawyer said on Friday. Zhao Yan, who worked as a researcher for the paper before his arrest in September last year, won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 prize this month for journalists who have “shown a strong commitment to press freedom”. “The way they have done this shows...
WHEN a dozen Chinese newspapers recently ran stories about a rash of sadistic cat killings in Shanghai by a perverse postgraduate student, it was another quiet triumph for a young man in Beijing called Zhao Jing. To a widening blog readership in China and abroad, Zhao is better known by the pseudonym Anti. As well as indicating an oppositionist stance in English, it also strikes a dissident note...
EC VICE president Margot Wallstroem has accused Microsoft, Yahoo and Google of having flexible morals when it comes to dealing with China. Writing in her bog, Wallstroem criticised the three companies for helping China silence its domestic critics. She said that Vole, Yahoo and Google were matching their morals to suit new markets and had words such as "ethics" and "corporate social responsibility...
A Beijing-based correspondent for the respected German weekly newspaper Die Zeit was detained for five hours Friday near so-called cancer villages along a severely polluted river in central China. Georg Blume said in a telephone interview from the hotel room where he was being held in Shenqiu, Henan province, and was accused of conducting 'illegal interviews'. He was cross-examined until he was...
As Chinese Prime Minister Wen continued a four-day visit to France that began yesterday, press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said it has confirmed that journalist Shi Tao, who is serving a 10-year-prison sentence, is having to do forced labour and he is suffering from respiratory problems and a skin inflammation. Shi, who was convicted of "illegally divulging state secrets abroad"...
The Australian and British governments colluded to cover up the killing of five Australian-based journalists in East Timor in 1975, new documents have revealed. Five television journalists – Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart, Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters – were killed while covering Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. LAST SHOT: The word "Australia" and an Australian flag painted...
