Freedom of Press: December 2006 Archives

By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press via Yahoo!news (uncensored world edition)
December 08, 2006

China, which jails more journalists than any other nation, is challenging the view that information on the Internet is impossible to control, and the implications for press freedom could be far-reaching, a New York-based rights group said.

At least 31 journalists are behind bars in China, making it the world's leading jailer of reporters for the eighth year in a row, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in its annual survey released Thursday.

Three out of four of the journalists were convicted under vague charges of subversion or revealing state secrets, and more than half were Internet journalists.

China encourages Internet use for business and education but tightly controls Web content, censoring anything it considers critical of — or a threat to — the Communist Party.

Blogs are often shut down, and those who post articles promoting Western-style democracy and freedom are routinely detained and jailed under subversion charges.

"China is challenging the notion that the Internet is impossible to control or censor, and if it succeeds there will be far-ranging implications, not only for the medium but for press freedom all over the world," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement Thursday.

>> Read the complete article

By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
December 01, 2006

A Beijing appeals court on Friday upheld a fraud conviction against a Chinese researcher for The New York Times in a ruling that means he will probably remain in prison until his three-year sentence ends next September.

The researcher, Zhao Yan, sought to overturn an August fraud conviction that stemmed from a period in 2001 when he worked as a reporter for a Chinese magazine. He has maintained his innocence, and his legal team has complained that the appeals court prohibited them from mounting a vigorous case.

Witnesses inside the High Court of Beijing said the judge called the case shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday.

“Do you have anything to say?” the judge asked Mr. Zhao.

“What kind of judge are you?” Mr. Zhao answered, according to the witnesses. “Is this how you use the power the country gave you?”

Outside the courtroom, Guan Anping, a lawyer for Mr. Zhao, criticized the court. “Zhao Yan wasn’t given the opportunity to testify in court,” Mr. Guan said. “He was not allowed to call witnesses or present certain evidence. They sustained the verdict without having another trial. The verdict was based only on the written materials.”

The case of Mr. Zhao, 44, has attracted international attention while raising questions about the rule of law and press freedom in China. Mr. Zhao was initially charged with leaking state secrets to The Times, which could have meant a prison sentence of more than 10 years.

The charge was linked to a September 2004 article in The Times, which reported that former President Jiang Zemin had unexpectedly offered to step down as chief of the military, his last leadership post. The Communist Party bars Chinese news organizations from reporting on high-level politics, and the Times article, based on anonymous sources, quickly prompted a high-level government investigation to determine the source of the leak.

Mr. Zhao joined the Beijing bureau of The Times in April 2004, after working as an investigative journalist for different publications. He was arrested less than two weeks after the publication of the Times article in September and accused of being a source for the article, which both the newspaper and Mr. Zhao have denied.

His trial was held last June, but a verdict was delayed until August, when, in a surprise, the lower court dismissed the state secrets charge. But Mr. Zhao was sentenced to three years on a lesser fraud charge that investigators added a few months after his initial arrest in the state secrets case. The two charges are unrelated, and some legal analysts have questioned whether investigators added the charge as a move to save face.

The fraud charge involves an accusation against Mr. Zhao by a minor official in Jilin Province. The official claimed that Mr. Zhao had taken a cash payment in exchange for promising to use his position as a journalist and his political influence to help the official avoid serving in a forced labor camp. Mr. Zhao has denied the accusation and has said that all of the witnesses against him are friends or relatives of his accuser. Mr. Zhao has already spent more than two years in prison and is scheduled for release next September. His lawyers say that his health has worsened.

On Thursday, Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, was asked during a regular news briefing about Mr. Zhao’s case and the larger question of press freedom in China. “China is a country of rule of law,” Ms. Jiang said. “This case has always been dealt with according to Chinese laws and legal procedures.”