British PM should push for press freedom in China
Dear Prime Minister Brown, The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonpartisan organization committed to promoting global press freedom, welcomes your visit to China at this crucial time in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. Your trip provides a unique opportunity to encourage Chinese leaders to meet the pledges they made when they were awarded the Games in 2001 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Officials attempt to arrest reporter for defamation
JANUARY 4, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Zhu Wenna, Faren Zazhi HARASSED/LEGAL ACTION Police and local officials from Xifeng in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning traveled nearly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) to Beijing with a warrant to arrest reporter Zhu Wenna in a defamation case on January 4, according to Reuters and The Washington…
Blogger harassed after protesting closure of magazine
NOVEMBER 29, 2007 Posted December 19, 2007 Zhai Minglei, Minjian Harassed According to his blog, Yibao,and international media commentators and bloggers, five officials from the local cultural administration searched Zhai’s Shanghai residence. Zhai is a former reporter with Southern Weekend and one of the founders of the banned grassroots activism magazine Minjian. The officials, who…
A crackdown on “fake” reporters in China draws a rebuke
New York, November 12, 2007—The Chinese government should abandon its crackdown on so-called “fake” foreign journalists in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ expressed alarm that the government’s plan, which includes amassing records of thousands of foreign journalists seeking Olympics accreditation, is a pretext to block critical…
29 Journalists spend China’s National Journalists’ Day behind bars
New York, November 7, 2007—As China celebrates National Journalists’ Day tomorrow, the Committee to Protect Journalists urges the Chinese government to address the cases of 29 journalists in prison for practicing their profession. Twenty-three of those journalists have been imprisoned since the first official Journalists’ Day was celebrated in China in 2001, the same year…