Chinese Stranglehold

The newspaper of Tuanjie, which means unity, celebrated its 50th anniversary on Friday. It was founded by China's non-communist party the Revolutionary Committee of Chinese Kuomintang. First published in 1956, the Tuanjie newspaper was shut down during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It resumed publishing in 1980 and is sold overseas. The paper, which later developed into the voice of non...

Amnesty International is turning up the pressure on Yahoo! to change directions in China. Amnesty International USA, the American branch of the international human rights group, is sending an official to Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting on May 25 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley. Anthony Cruz, the San Francisco-based Amnesty official who plans to speak at the meeting...

(RSF/IFEX) - The Public Security Bureau's formal refusal on 17 May 2006 to allow detained blogger and documentary filmmaker Hao Wu access to a lawyer on national security grounds is "absurd," Reporters Without Borders has said, as Hao began his fourth month in detention. "Hao's case is emblematic of the PSB's methods," the press freedom organisation said. "It is farcical to treat this blogger as a...

SAN DIEGO--Hu Shuli, editor of the Beijing-based Caijing Magazine, says without fail she is asked some version of the same question each time she travels abroad. "What is taboo for Chinese journalists?" "Foreign journalists pay too much attention to what is taboo in China" Hu says. "We don't pay attention to it. There are so many important news stories. If a story's important enough, we'll find a...

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the continued imprisonment of New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, who has been re-indicted on charges of fraud and revealing state secrets. The Times reported the reinstated charges today. Zhao has been imprisoned for 21 months without once appearing before a judge. Charges against Zhao were dropped in March prior to the visit to the United States of...

BEIJING -- A freelance writer was sentenced to 12 years in prison yesterday, receiving an unusually harsh penalty amid one of China's most severe media crackdowns since the 1980s. The sentencing of Yang Tianshui on subversion charges was one of a flurry of court actions yesterday against Chinese reporters. In Beijing, prosecutors filed a new indictment against a Chinese researcher for The New York...

Chinese prosecutors have filed a new indictment against a researcher for The New York Times, but it is unclear if they have introduced new charges or simply restated the case that was withdrawn in March, his lawyer said Monday. The new indictment against Zhao Yan was filed last Friday in a Beijing court. Mo Shaoping, the lawyer who has represented Mr. Zhao, said he had not yet been able to see the...

The organisation regretted that "China was marking the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution by censoring the Internet and cracking down on democrats", pointing to a 12-year jail term against a cyberdissident and closure of a pollster website. Yang Tianshui was sentenced on 16 May 2006 to 12 years in prison for posting anti-government articles online. Elsewhere a website, Polls (Zhongguo...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the physical attacks which five Chinese journalists sustained at the hands of mine employees and security guards on 7 and 8 May 2006 while trying to cover an accident in the Meihe coal mine in the northeastern province of Jilin. "As well as having to cope with government censorship, China's journalists are increasingly subject to physical...

New York, May 11, 2006 - With the 2008 Olympic Games just two years away, the Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned about the Chinese government's continuing crackdown on the media. China's policies of the past three years show a disturbing trend that seems certain to affect journalists reporting from Beijing in 2008. CPJ calls on the Chinese government and the International...