Freedom of Press: February 2009 Archives

By Agence France Presse | Dow Jones Newswire | via NASDAQ.COM
February 24, 2009

China has closed Tibet to foreign tourists ahead of next month's highly sensitive 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, tour agencies and other industry people said Tuesday.

"Authorities asked tour agents to stop organizing foreigners coming to Tibet for tour trips until April 1," an employee at a government-run travel agency in Lhasa, who didn't want to be named for fear of reprisals, said.

A hotel in the Tibetan capital and three travel agencies in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu that normally organize trips into Tibet also confirmed the ban for foreigners during March.

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By Henry Sanderson - Associated Press | via UNCENSORED Yahoo!News
February 03, 2009

China's foreign ministry and media on Tuesday denounced a man who hurled his shoe at the country's premier and called him a dictator on a visit to Britain -- all while avoiding explicit descriptions of the protest itself.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu called the disruption of Premier Wen Jiabao's speech "despicable" during a press conference but said it would not "stem the tide of friendly relations between China and Britain." She didn't mention shoes.

Unlike the now-famous incident when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush in December, covered widely not only in China but around the world, state-run newspapers and Web sites in China carried stories on Wen's speech but did not directly mention the shoe-throwing.

China's state-run CCTV network reported Foreign Ministry comments, which acknowledged a "disturbance" during the speech, but made no mention a shoe had been thrown at Wen.

The official Xinhua News Agency issued a story saying that Britain apologized for an incident and that China had "expressed its strong feelings against the occurrence of the incident." However, it did not say what the incident was.

China keeps a tight grip on its media, blocking any content deemed as a challenge or insulting to the ruling Communist Party or the country's leaders.

In the live broadcast of the speech on CCTV's Web site, the camera remains fixed on Wen, not showing the shoe or the protester, although his remarks and the sound of the shoe hitting the stage can be heard. Wen pauses, glances sideways as the shoe hits the stage, and then continues his speech.

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