Chinese Stranglehold

The Propaganda Department to Chinese news media and news websites has censored reports about a corruption case with links to President Hu Jintao’s son and about the closure of a human rights law centre, according to Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The Propaganda Department’s readiness to suppress news is an insult to the rights of Chinese citizens to be informed about matters of...

Detentions of journalists reporting on ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang region has been continuing, according to press freedom groups. The Beijing-based Uighur academic and blogger Ilham Tohti, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has been missing since July 8 when he told a friend he had received a notice of detention. On July 6, Beijing public security officials questioned...

A group of Venezuelan journalists with the regional television network Telesur and the state-owned station Venezolana de Televisión (VTV) left Honduras on Sunday after being detained and harassed in the capital, Tegucigalpa, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. "We are gravely concerned that the media environment in Honduras has become increasingly polarized while the interim...

Authorities in northwest Chinese province of Xinjiang are said to be harassing journalists reporting on ethnic rioting in regional capital Urumqi, according to press freedom groups. One journalist was detained for two hours in Urumqi Tuesday for reporting independently of a government-organised media tour of the damaged city, according to National Public Radio. "I went independently of the group...

A year after the devastating May 12, 2008 earthquake in China's Sichuan province, journalists are still being persecuted. After the recent harassment of several foreign journalists and the arrest of least one local writer, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has called on authorities in Sichuan province to allow journalists to report freely in the area on the one-year anniversary

China's inconsistency in applying its own new rules and regulations for non-mainland journalists amounts to obstacle-setting in which bureaucrats continue to restrict reporting regardless of government edicts, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has said. According to local media reports, officers of the Sichuan provincial government sought to bar journalists from entering...

Chinese authorities in Tibet should open the region to foreign journalists and release imprisoned Tibetan journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded. Tuesday is the 50th anniversary of an uprising against Chinese rule. Foreigners, including journalists, were ordered out of Kangding City, a Tibetan region of Sichuan, today after two homemade explosives were thrown at police...

China should open Tibetan areas to independent monitors and journalists as a means of diffusing ethnic tensions and preventing violence on the eve of a string of politically sensitive anniversaries, Human Rights Watch has demanded. One year after the largest Tibetan protests for more than two decades, the presence of such observers would serve as an incentive for good behavior for crowds, which...

China's decision to establish a list of reporters who break reporting rules and prevent them from continuing to report or edit news is a cause for concern, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The decision to create a blacklist was reported in an article on the website of the official China Press and Publishing Journal. The journal's report, titled "Strengthen oversight and service...

Press freedom groups are calling for transparency in the investigation of two journalists arrested on bribery charges in northern Shanxi province. Shanxi public security officials told local journalists on Monday that Guan Jian, a reporter for Beijing-based weekly Wangluo Bao (Network News) who had been missing for 15 days, is in custody in neighbouring Hubei province on suspicion of accepting...