China blocks Tibet coverage

2008-03-19 12:27

Beijing - Chinese police have threatened or blocked foreign journalists from reporting on unrest in Tibet at least 30 times since deadly riots erupted there last week, reporters said on Wednesday.

In one of the latest incidents, an AFP reporter was ordered off a bus in southwest China.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said journalists had experienced interference in the cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Xining, as well as in Lhasa.

"You don't want to know what will happen if you don't show us the footage," the club quoted police telling Finnish reporter Katri Makkonen, detained on Tuesday in northwest China's Gansu province, where Tibetan monks held protests against Chinese rule.

In several other locations, police barred reporters from carrying out their work and escorted them out of areas where forces were reportedly quelling unrest.

Travel ban

Several more reporters were taken in for questioning by authorities on Wednesday in southwest China's Sichuan province.

These included an AFP reporter and another Western journalist who were told they could not travel to an area with a large population of Tibetans.

"We were on a public bus. They stopped the bus, found us and took our passports," the AFP reporter said.

"Then they took us back to their office and told us that they had to stop us out of concern for our safety and... because we were reporters."

The officials who interrogated the journalists admitted that the travel ban was due to the unrest in Tibet.

At least two other Western journalists were ordered out of Tibetan areas in Sichuan on Wednesday, one reporter said.

Purposely distort facts

The latest interference comes after the Foreign Correspondents Club this week demanded that the government respect new regulations issued for the period up to and during the Beijing Olympics, allowing greater press freedoms for foreign journalists.

On Monday, US State Department spokesperson Tom Casey decried China's expulsion of foreign journalists from Tibet, calling it "disturbing and disappointing."

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned what it called steps taken by Beijing to prevent media coverage of demonstrations and an ongoing crackdown in Tibet.

Meanwhile, a former top Chinese government official from Tibet slammed Western news coverage of the unrest, calling it irresponsible.

"It's outrageous that the irresponsible news coverage of some Western media even failed to discover facts of the riot," Xinhua news agency quoted Tibet's former top leader Raidi as saying.

"Some Western media purposely distorted the facts and viciously described severe crime as peaceful demonstrations, so as to slander our legitimate efforts to keep social stability."

- AFP