Official warns Hong Kong media on Taiwan coverage
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the April 12 statements of a senior Chinese official, warning Hong Kong media that they are not free to report independently on the contentious issue of Taiwan’s political status.
China: CPJ protests jailing of reporter Gao Quinrong
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the prolonged imprisonment of Gao Qinrong, a reporter for China’s state news agency, Xinhua. Gao has been in jail on trumped-up charges since December 4, 1998, for exposing flaws in a much-touted irrigation system in drought-plagued Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, according to his wife, Duan Maoying.
Attacks on the Press 1999: Introduction
By Ann CooperAs a foreign correspondent covering the Soviet Union a decade ago, I was an eyewitness to a dramatic example of the press’ critical role in building democracy. Granted a bit of freedom by Mikhail Gorbachev’s mid-1980s glasnost policy, long-suppressed Soviet journalists set their own daring agenda: they probed forbidden history, investigated contemporary corruption,…
Attacks on the Press 1999: Asia Analysis
By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…
Attacks on the Press 1999: Enemies of the Press
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
Attacks on the Press 1999: Macau
The handover of the former Portuguese colony of Macau to China on December 20 effectively ended the last vestige of European rule in Asia. Macau, a tiny island territory whose principal industry is casino gambling, is now a Special Administrative Region of China, to be governed in the same general manner as its larger neighbor,…
Reporter jailed for exposing corruption
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in CHINA New York, August 3, 2000 — Xinhua state news agency reporter Gao Qinrong has been in jail on trumped-up charges since December 4, 1998, for doing exactly what China’s leaders asked the country’s journalists to do: help fight corruption.
China: Jailed software entrepreneur was secretly freed last September
New York, March 6, 2000 — CPJ has confirmed the early release of Lin Hai, the Shanghai software entrepreneur who was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on subversion charges in January 1999, for providing 30,000 e-mail addresses to VIP Reference, a pro-democracy online magazine. Lin was quietly released on September 23, 1999, six months ahead…