Restricting the foreign press

With the Olympics barely seven weeks off, China is apparently hoping that no one will notice it isn’t fully keeping its pledge to open up the country to the foreign media during the Games.

Wednesday offered a good example of the kind of controls China still places on reporters.

The Olympic torch made its tour during the morning through Kashgar, the Silk Road outpost in the troubled Xinjiang region of far west China. Minders kept foreign reporters away from most of the relay route and barred them from speaking to ordinary citizens.

Here’s a tidbit from the Reuters story datelined from Kashgar:

Foreign reporters have been banned from talking to anyone watching the torch along its route, despite China pledging complete media freedom when it applied to host the Olympics, and are limited to a few stage-managed events.

"Anybody can watch the torch, but if you come on your own or with your family, you'll have to watch it from afar and can't get up close," one sullen government official said.

The Associated Press story also made mention of the restrictions on foreign media:

Black-gloved security agents jogged alongside the torch as it wound through the streets of Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road city near the borders with Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Foreign journalists were not allowed along the route, where cheering bystanders shouted "Go China!" under sunny skies.

Later in the same story, the AP journalist noted the following:

Xinjiang officials accompanied foreign journalists on a bus to the relay and did not allow them to wander from the group. After the start of the event, the journalists were taken to the finish point _ a square dominated by a giant statue of Mao Zedong, a reminder of heavy-handed Communist Party rule over the region since People's Liberation Army forces entered in 1949.

A day earlier in Urumqi, Xinjiang residents were told to stay home and watch the torch relay on TV. That’s probably what Chinese authorities also wish foreign reporters would do.

Comments

[A B]

There is no doubt that all the above cases are true, and there are issues with the pledge vs. the actual implementation at the ground level.

What is important is to make readers aware that China is a big country, and an edict from Beijing with respect to loosening controls, do not necessarily filter down to all the different departments and organizations involved. Notwithstanding the generalities of the foregoing, that would mean all the local governments (Foreign Affairs - Press Office), the Public Security Bureau, and the multitude of security agencies all with overlapping and conflicting mandates.

Having said that, shooing journalist on a bus tour away from talking to people is, um, disappointingly bad PR management.

It is probably true that it is the Xinjiang Press Office, and not Beijing - but they need to do a lot better.

Beijing can do better.

So can Xinjiang.

The officials involved need to be properly trained in etiquette and acceptable methods under such circumstances.

(Note I did not say "reprimanded".)

[A B]

I think that McCain ad need to be deleted.

[Mike]

China has only alienated the different ethnic groups with the Olympics. I think the situation could have been different if they had of done more to include them in the Olympic preparations and ceremonies.

I think Australia did this successfully with the Aborigines at the Sydney Games. By including them it gave them something to celebrate rather than launch protests.

I know the two countries are completely different, but the Olympics should be about bringing people together, an idealistic view I know, but they did go with the motto "One world one dream".

[kim]

Wang Wei, the Beijing organising commitee's vice president, said in July 2001: "We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China."

Journalists and writers must be allowed to do their work without fear of arrest, harassment, beating, imprisonment and torture.

Amnesty International Australia is campaigning on this issue and others, check out its microsite http://www.uncensor.com.au – and sign the anti-Internet censorship pledge - http://action.uncensor.com.au/pledge/.

[pug_ster]

The problem is those journalists ' intent is to troll around the countryside and look for anybody who hates the Chinese governments in order to get their story. If these propagandists are not interested in promoting hate towards China, maybe they won't be such restrictions towards them.