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Chinese crackdown on journalists, activists drawing cries of repression
Agence France Presse - March 3, 2011
Beijing – Human rights groups on Thursday sharply criticized the Chinese government over what one called a "new wave of frenzied repression" in response to a call for antigovernment rallies in China.
Beijing has launched a massive security clampdown in response to the calls inspired by the "Jasmine revolution" in Tunisia, which sparked a wave of unrest against authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.
"The regime is once again reacting with a new wave of frenzied repression targeting these activists after the call for 'Jasmine Revolution,'" said Renee Xia, international director of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
Xia, whose network is based in Hong Kong, called for the international community to "provide sustained and concrete support" to embattled campaigners by speaking up for them.
Authorities in China have shown increasing nervousness about the Internet's power to mobilize ordinary citizens in the wake of unrest in the Arab world, and the subsequent online call for antigovernment "Jasmine" rallies at home.
Chinese police have turned out in force each of the past two Sundays in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent gatherings and news media coverage.
On Sunday, police manhandled foreign journalists working in a Beijing shopping street designated as a rally site, briefly detaining several of them. Bloomberg News said one of its reporters was punched and kicked by plainclothes security. The BBC also said members of its staff were roughed up.
"The police response to the foreign journalists was a flashback to the bad old days," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "The impulse to control journalists through fear and thuggery – which many Chinese journalists live with every day – seems still to also apply to the foreign media."
Human Rights in China released a statement urging the Chinese government to stop intimidating foreign journalists, investigate the rough treatment some have experienced and "release all persons taken into custody or detained as part of the efforts to prevent them from participating in the Jasmine Rallies."
Dozens of activists have been subjected to interrogation, house arrest and other restrictions or have "disappeared" since the campaign first surfaced last month, rights groups say, with several reportedly facing subversion charges.
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