Annual Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China ...

<strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China (2009)April 26, 2010Though State Council regulations granted them greater freedom than they enjoyed priorto the buildup to the Olympics, media from Hong Kong and Macau, as well as foreignjournalists, often had their work obstructed by local officials in 2009. In August andSeptember 2009, Hong Kong journalists were shaken as a number of their colleagueswere beaten, detained and harassed for reporting on the Urumqi riots and the trial ofSichuan activist Tan Zuoren. 34 Foreign journalists appeared to fare better, though CHRDstill documented cases in which local governments placed obstacles in their work bythreatening or retaliating against their interviewees or those who supplied them withinformation.• On February 18, an interview scheduled between a journalist from Spain'sCatalonia TV station and Guangdong labor rights activist Xiao Qingshan ( )at a job fair in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province was forcibly broken up by agroup of unidentified workers. The same day, Xiao received a call from theNational Security Unit of the Dongguan PSB informing him that he would bequestioned about the incident the following day. 35• On July 6, lawyer Yang Zaixin (肖),青from山Beihai City, Guangxi Province,was forced to “travel” to Dongxing City in Guangxi by National Security officersfrom the Beihai PSB to prevent him from giving an interview to a reporter fromFinland. The reporter sought to interview Yang about a land dispute between localfarmers, whom Yang was representing, and a company with Finnish investorswhich was clearing farmland in order to grow trees for paper production. Yangwas released in the evening of July 8 but then taken into custody again on July 9and released on the afternoon of July 10. 36新 在 杨While the government maintained control on print media throughout 2009, the situationwas not appreciably better or worse than the previous year. As all the formal and informalregulations restricting the work of journalists remain in place moving forward,indications seem to be that China’s journalists are no more or less likely to use the printmedia as a platform to expose rights abuses and express critical views in the year ahead.2. The internetThe main battleground for freedom of expression, in 2009 as in the years before, residesin the realm of the World Wide Web. In an article published in the December 1 edition ofQiushi, a magazine run by the CCP Party School, the Minister of Public Security MengJianzhu ( ) called the internet “a significant means of amplifying the destructivecapabilities of anti-China forces.” 37 His remarks indicated growing concern among topofficials circles that the government has had difficulties successfully controlling internetactivism. These difficulties were also expressed by the diverse approaches the authoritiestook to internet censorship in the past year, the mixed results these methods achieved, andthe large number of attempts to resist internet censorship by activists and ordinarycitizens.柱 建 孟a. Censorship of websites and blogs14