Freedom of Press: May 2006 Archives
International Herald Tribune | The New York Times
May 21, 2006
Before President Hu Jintao of China visited the United States earlier this spring, there was hope that his government would free Zhao Yan, a longtime journalist who is now a researcher for The New York Times. Zhao was being held on political charges, the prosecution's attempt to make him the scapegoat for a Times article that had apparently outraged Chinese leaders. And when those charges were dropped shortly before Hu met with President Bush, it raised the possibility that Zhao would be released immediately.
Now, that hope seems lost. Last week, prosecutors reinstated the old charges against Zhao word for word, charge for charge. The reinstatement is doubly distressing. Zhao was not in fact a source for a Times exclusive two years ago on the announcement of a change of leadership. And Chinese laws forbid double jeopardy, so this second charge on the same offense runs directly counter to the country's own code.
The Bush administration has helped make Zhao's case a priority and that emphasis can only help. But some China experts worry that this legal step backward is one reaction to Hu's treatment when he was in Washington. The White House refused to elevate the trip to a state visit, which apparently rankled some of the Chinese. An announcer called China by the official name of Taiwan and a woman who had received press credentials disrupted one event to protest treatment of the Falun Gong.
Agence France Presse | Yahoo
May 19, 2006
China's film censor criticized the director of a movie set around the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests for showing it at the Cannes Film Festival without government approval.
"Summer Palace", directed by 40-year-old Lou Ye, is a love story that follows the open and sexually free lives of Chinese students before the protests and how they deal with the bloody quelling of the demonstrations and its aftermath.
"This amounts to participation in a competition against regulations," Zhang Hongwei, deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television's film bureau, told AFP.
"The film has not passed screening from the administration. This violates our country's regulations on films."
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
May 17, 2006
Chinese prosecutors have indicted a researcher for The New York Times on accusations of fraud and disclosing state secrets, a reinstatement of the same case that authorities dropped two months ago.
The reintroduction of charges against Zhao Yan, 44, who worked in The Times's Beijing bureau, means that legal proceedings against him are at a new starting point, even though he has spent almost 21 months in prison without a hearing or an appearance before a judge.
Mo Shaoping, the lead defense lawyer for Mr. Zhao, said Chinese law requires that a trial be held within six weeks, though prosecutors can seek at least two postponements. Mr. Zhao, who has denied the charges, faces at least 10 years in prison if convicted. His case has been marked by delays and legal irregularities.
"We're deeply, deeply disappointed," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. "We've never seen any proof that Zhao Yan was guilty of anything but journalism. Over the past year, we've been writing about Chinese efforts to modernize their legal system, and a case like this certainly casts doubt on their progress."
BBC News
May 15, 2006
China has revived a legal case against a detained New York Times researcher two months after dropping charges against him, his lawyer said.
Zhao Yan was arrested in September 2004 and was facing charges of leaking state secrets and fraud.
But the charges were dropped in March one month before a US visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Lawyer Mo Shaoping said there was a new indictment against his client, but he did not know what the charges were.
"The prosecutors notified me last Friday that they had re-transferred the case to the Beijing Second Intermediate Court one or two days earlier," he told Reuters news agency.
He said prosecutors had told him they were "resuming criminal investigation and prosecution", but he said there was no legal basis for this under Chinese law.
"It is definitely a prolonged and illegal detention now," he said.
************REPORTERS************
WITHOUT BORDERS | SANS FRONTIERES
05 May 2006
Faced with growing social unrest, the government has chosen to impose a news blackout. The press has been forced into self-censorship, the Internet purged and foreign media kept at a distance.
Arrests of journalists, particularly Chinese contributors to foreign media, continued in 2005. Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong reporter with a Singapore daily was imprisoned for “espionage”. While Zhao Yan, contributor to the New York Times, winner of a 2005 Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France press freedom award, is to be tried for “disclosing state secrets”. In Tibet, five monks were arresting for working on an underground publication, while in Muslim Xinjiang, the editor of a literary magazine was sentenced to three years in prison. As of 1st January 2006, at least 32 journalists were in prison throughout the country.
Every day, Chinese editors receive a list of banned subjects from the Propaganda Department, renamed the Publicity Department. These include demonstrations by peasants, the unemployed or Tibetans - nothing escapes the censors who stoke up a climate of fear within editorial offices. When the army opened fire on villagers in December, draconian measures were put in place: The press was banned from carrying anything but reports from the official Xinhua news agency, foreign reporters were persona non grata in the region and every reference to the village was erased from the Internet.
In the same way, the announcement of the death of former prime minister Zhao Ziyang, ousted in 1989, was banned by the government, his name missing from television, discussion forums and search engines. In December the press was banned from publishing a single word on the death in exile of journalist Liu Binyan, dubbed the “conscience of China”.
At least 16 foreign journalists were arrested by police in 2005 while investigating sensitive issues. China has given no promises to guarantee their freedom to work ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games.
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