MCLC: Xinhua monitors critics in Canada

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Timothy J.T. Pi <timothy.pi at gmail.com>
Subject: Xinhua monitors critics in Canada
**********************************************************

Source: National Post (8/22/12):
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/22/notes-going-to-china-not-public-can
adian-speaks-out-about-split-with-xinhua-news-agency/

China’s state-run news agency being used to monitor critics in Canada:
reporter
By Kathryn Blaze Carlson

Mark Bourrie had just finished listening to the Dalai Lama speak at the
Ottawa Civic Centre with his wife and daughter when he says his cellphone
rang: It was his boss — the Ottawa bureau chief for the Chinese state-run
news agency, Xinhua — asking Mr. Bourrie to take notes at the spiritual
leader’s press conference and pin down what happened at the Dalai Lama’s
private meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper earlier that April day.

On its face, the request was not an odd one. Mr. Bourrie, an award-winning
Canadian journalist and author, had for two years worked as a full-time
freelancer for the news agency and had covered the Dalai Lama’s speech at
a convention the day before.

But by this point a series of what he called “odd” requests by bureau
chief Dacheng Zhang had Mr. Bourrie concerned the news agency was
gathering intelligence on Chinese dissidents and sending information back
to Beijing. He said he asked Mr. Zhang if his reporting on the Dalai
Lama’s visit would be published as a news story; Mr. Zhang, he said, told
him the news agency does not typically publish anything related to the
Dalai Lama, the Buddhist leader who has long campaigned for the separation
of Tibet from China.

What then, did Xinhua want with Mr. Bourrie’s coverage?

“They tried to get me … to write a report for the Chinese government on
the Dalai Lama using my press credentials as a way of getting access I
wouldn’t otherwise have,” Mr. Bourrie, a long-time freelancer who has
written for several major Canadian newspapers, said in an interview with
the National Post. He alleges there are individuals within Xinhua who are
acting as spies, seeking to “monitor [practitioners of the spiritual
movement] Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama and any other critics of the Chinese
government in Canada. That, I know for sure.”

=================================
Related
* An excerpt from Mark Bourrie’s upcoming piece on his experience working
for Xinhua news agency in Ottawa
<http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/22/notes-going-to-china-not-public-ca
nadian-speaks-out-about-split-with-xinhua-news-agency/#1>

* Email exchanges between MP, Chinese journalist a serious matter:
analysts 
<http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/12/email-exchanges-between-mp-chinese
-journalist-a-serious-matter-analysts/>
================================

An email to Mr. Zhang was not acknowledged by deadline on Tuesday. The
National Post also tried to reach him at Xinhua’s Ottawa bureau — which
Mr. Bourrie said is the modest home of Mr. Zhang and his wife, Li Shi, who
also works for Xinhua — but Ms. Shi answered the phone and said Mr. Zhang
was on a media tour with Mr. Harper in the Arctic. She directed any
questions about Xinhua to Mr. Zhang.

Mr. Bourrie recounts his two years working for Xinhua in the upcoming
issue of Ottawa Magazine, which comes out Thursday, where he offers the
first real glimpse into an organization that has long raised eyebrows in
the intelligence community for its close ties to the governing Chinese
Communist Party.

Last fall, the state-run agency came under intense scrutiny when news
broke that Conservative MP and parliamentary secretary Bob Dechert had
exchanged flirtatious emails with Xinhua’s Toronto bureau chief. One year
before that, CSIS director Richard Fadden publicly warned that some
politicians were falling under the influence of foreign governments
through personal relationships. He hinted China was among those
governments.

I think some of them are spies under the cover of being reporters for the
Xinhua news agency

Charles Burton, a Brock University professor of Chinese politics and a
former diplomat in Beijing, said Mr. Bourrie’s account “confirms
everything we know about Xinhua.”

“The function of the Xinhua news agency is to gather information for the
regime,” he said. “I think some of them are spies under the cover of being
reporters for the Xinhua news agency.”

Julie Carmichael, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews,
said in an email she “cannot comment on matters related to national
security” and that “all credible threats are investigated by the
appropriate authorities.”

Xinhua’s Chinese presence in Canada is small — Mr. Bourrie said he knows
of only four or five correspondents, two of whom are in Ottawa, one or two
in Toronto, and one in Vancouver. According to a May 2011 Xinhua press
release, the agency employs 16,000 people and runs three bureaus in Canada
and seven in the United States.

Mr. Bourrie said “90%” of his assignments were “normal” and that all of
his own work was “legit,” but he also said there were warning bells along
the way. The first sounded in June 2010, when he was asked to determine
not only the identities of those who protested Chinese president Hu
Jintao’s arrival at the G20 Summit in Toronto, but also where those
protesters were staying.

“‘Canadian reporters don’t do that,’ I explained,” Mr. Bourrie writes in
his upcoming Ottawa Magazine exposé. “The subject was quickly dropped, and
I went back to my regular work for the agency, writing about Bank of
Canada announcements, new crime and immigration laws, Royal visits, and
quirky news.”

But later he said he started receiving “weird” requests, including an
assignment to determine how Canada deals with what Mr. Zhang apparently
called “evil cults” — more specifically, Mr. Bourrie said, he was
interested in Falun Gong.

Mr. Bourrie noticed that while he had covered Falun Gong press conferences
and events on Parliament Hill, those stories, as far as he could tell,
were not published online. He said he is now under the impression the
information was sent to Beijing.

Mr. Bourrie cut all ties with Xinhua on April 28, 2012, the day of the
Dalai Lama’s press conference, and immediately notified the parliamentary
Press Gallery of his concerns.

“At today’s news conference, you informed me the material that I was to
send you would be forwarded to the Chinese government,” Mr. Bourrie wrote
in an email to Mr. Zhang, which was also copied to the Canadian
Parliamentary Press Gallery chief, Terry Guillon.

Mr. Zhang, who along with Ms. Shi is listed as a press gallery member,
responded saying “any message released at news conference is news, and
news is open to every one, including the government.”

Mr. Bourrie says in his magazine article that Xinhua swiftly replaced him
with another accredited freelancer in Ottawa.

The president of the press gallery, which grants the accreditation that
gives journalists access to government buildings, politicians and press
conferences, said the executive is “aware of the disagreement” between Mr.
Bourrie and Xinhua.

“The Executive has asked both sides to come and explain their views,”
president Chris Rands said in an email. “We are in a process at the moment
and I cannot pre-judge any decision the Executive may, or may not make”
concerning Xinhua’s media accreditation.