A new report has detailed the China’s government campaign of repression against journalists and the right to information.
In its unprecedented report released this week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that China’s vast detention of journalists shows it is conducting an unprecedented campaign of repression worldwide against free journalism and free press.
The RSF’s investigation is named “The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China.” The report published two years after China’s Pursuit of a New World Media Order, reveals the sheer extent of the Chinese government’s campaign of repression.
One of the biggest revelations in the report is that China is the worst captor of journalists in the world. At least 127 journalists are currently detained by the Chinese authorities.
The damning RSF’s 82-page report lists how China uses many tactics in order to control journalists and citizen journalists. It includes widespread detentions, intimidation of foreign reporters, arresting journalists for “provoking trouble,” justifying arrests as “fighting terrorism,” vast censorship of topics online and in news, using diplomatic missions to attack journalists, media blockades, forcing journalists to study Communist Party ideology, ensuring they download propaganda applications to their phones, intimidating journalists, and expelling them from the country completely.
A common method of justifying arrests is by labeling the journalists as “provoking trouble,” a blanket term that watchdogs and advocacy groups say China uses in order to arrest people they disagree with or want to silence.
Another blanket term, fighting terrorism, is used in order to detain Uyghur journalists and silence them from reporting on Xinjiang. China has been accused of crimes against humanity for its treatment of the Uyghur people, which is classified as a genocide by many experts and advocacy groups worldwide.
The report found that there is an entire media blockade in Xinjiang being conducted in the name of the “fight against terrorism,” with 71 Uyghur journalists currently under arrest.
Journalists are forced to be the government party’s mouthpiece in order to obtain press cards. All journalists will soon have to participate in annual training lasting for 90 minutes focusing on the Party’s “Thought.”
All journalists already must download Study Xi, Strengthen the Country — a propaganda application that collects personal data and allows authorities to monitor journalists.
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