MCLC: China expels Al Jazeera

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: China expels Al Jazeera
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (5/7/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/world/asia/china-expels-al-jazeera-englis
h-language-channel.html

China Expels Al Jazeera Channel
By MICHAEL WINES 

BEIJING ‹ Al Jazeera, the satellite broadcasting network, was forced by
the Chinese authorities to close its China news operations of its
English-language channel on Monday, the first such action in almost 14
years and the strongest sign yet of fraying relations between the ruling
Communist Party and the overseas journalists who cover it.

The network¹s correspondent Melissa Chan
<http://blogs.aljazeera.net/profile/melissa-chan> was scheduled to leave
Beijing by jet Monday night after the government refused normally routine
requests to renew her press credentials or to allow another correspondent
to replace her.

She declined to be quoted about her departure, and the government¹s motive
was not explicitly stated. But among other broadcasts, officials were said
by some to have been angered by an English-language documentary
<http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/2011/10/201110
1091153782814.html> on Chinese re-education through labor camps that Al
Jazeera produced outside China and broadcast on its network in November.

The labor camps are often used to punish dissidents and other
troublemakers. The documentary called the camps a form of slavery in which
millions of prisoners produce goods sold worldwide by major companies.
China denies using slave labor in its prisons.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the Beijing-based Foreign
Correspondents¹ Club of China noted that Ms. Chan played no role in the
documentary that appeared to anger the Chinese, and that the government
had offered no specific reason for denying the renewal of her visa beyond
violations of unnamed rules.

³This is the most extreme example of a recent pattern of using journalist
visas in an attempt to censor and intimidate foreign correspondents in
China,² the group stated. ³The F.C.C.C. believes that foreign news
organizations, not the Chinese government, have the right to choose who
works for them in China, in line with international standards.²

Jazeera English officials expressed regret at the closing of their China
operations, and said in a statement they had sought additional visas for
journalists to expand their coverage here without success.

The closure, if not reversed, is a potentially significant loss for Al
Jazeera Network, which began more than 15 years ago as the first
independent news channel in the Arab world. It has expanded to more than
20 channels with more than 60 bureaus on six continents, according to the
Web site of the parent company
<http://www.aljazeera.com/aboutus/2006/11/2008525185555444449.html>, based
in Doha, Qatar. Ms. Chan, an American, was recently accepted
<http://knight.stanford.edu/news/2012/2013fellows/> as a Knight Journalism
Fellow at Stanford for the 2012-13 academic year.

³We constantly cover the voice of the voiceless, and sometimes that calls
for tough news coverage from anywhere in world,² Salah Negm, Al Jazeera¹s
English news director, said in a written statement. ³We hope China
appreciates the integrity of our news coverage and our journalism. We
value this journalistic integrity in our coverage of all countries in the
world.²

The rejection of press credentials for Al Jazeera comes amid rising
official sensitivity to foreign news coverage as China¹s ascendance ‹ and
its increasingly high-profile social and political problems ‹ have become
issues of global importance and, in some quarters, criticism.

In recent weeks, Chinese authorities have privately and sharply criticized
Western coverage of the upheaval in the country¹s leadership ranks after
the ouster of Bo Xilai, the ambitious Politburo member whose wife has been
accused of murdering a British acquaintance.

Most recently, Beijing security officials last week harassed foreign
journalists reporting on Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer and rights
activist who fled house arrest last month to seek refuge in the United
States Embassy here.

On Friday, officers temporarily confiscated the identification cards of
several journalists who entered the grounds of the Beijing hospital where
Mr. Chen is confined. Roughly a dozen other journalists were summoned to
the public security bureau and warned that their visas would be revoked if
they did not ask permission before seeking interviews with officials and
others knowledgeable about Mr. Chen¹s situation.

Journalists in China are nominally required to seek approval before
conducting interviews, but in practice, the rule is almost never enforced.

Restrictions on foreign journalism in China are widely seen to have
tightened in the last 18 months, as China¹s leaders have striven to
project an aura of stability and unity amid global political upheavals and
China¹s own turnover to a new generation of leaders, scheduled for this
fall.

The crackdown dates to early 2011, when security officers detained foreign
journalists seeking to cover the so-called Jasmine Spring protests, an
online call for demonstrations in sympathy with Arab Spring revolutions in
the Middle East. One American journalist was severely beaten and
hospitalized. Many others were summoned to public security offices for
warnings.

Still, Beijing generally has been loath to expel foreign journalists, and
the few prominent instances have often involved allegations that reporters
had violated national security prohibitions.

Ms. Chan is believed to be the first accredited foreign correspondent to
be denied reporting privileges since the October 1998 expulsion
<http://www.ifex.org/china/1998/10/07/japanese_journalist_deported/> of
Yukihisa Nakatsu, a journalist with Japan¹s largest daily newspaper,
Yomiuri Shimbun. Mr. Nakatsu was accused of obtaining state secrets,
apparently stemming from his contacts with a Chinese economic journalist
arrested earlier by state security officers.

The Chinese expelled a German correspondent in 1995 after he wrote
articles sharply critical of Li Peng, then the premier, who played a key
role in decisions to use force to quash the 1989 Tiananmen Square
protests. Andrew Higgins, a correspondent for London¹s Independent
newspaper, was expelled in 1991 after being found with confidential
information about a supposed crackdown on Inner Mongolian nationalists.

Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 7, 2012

An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Andrew Higgins
was expelled from China in 1992. He was expelled in 1991. The article also
incorrectly stated that Melissa Chan, the Al Jazeera correspondent, no
longer worked for Al Jazeera English. She still does.