China jails Hong Kong reporter for spying
A Hong Kong journalist has been jailed for five years in mainland China, after being convicted of spying. Ching Cheong, who was the chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times, has been in detention since April 2005. China's state-owned online news service, Chinanews, did not report on the story.
Ching Cheong was arrested in April 2005 in Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) after meeting with a contact who had tapes of interviews with ousted leader Zhao Ziyang.
Zhao, a leading reformer who died in 2005, was deposed as general secretary of the Communist party after the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders have expressed dismay at Ching's sentence and say China is engaged in a campaign to crack down on the media. They say Ching's real crime appears to have been trying to uncover dissidence in China's top leadership by seeking out a manuscript by Zhao.
posted by journaler @ 5:48 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
How many others that we haven't heard about???But that is China.
Did the Straits Times run a story about this? I wonder how they covered it as the paper is not known for freedoms
... today I watched a program on BBC World Asia Report regarding new restrictions on foreign media in China. (I don't think they are new but rather newly imposed). Some times such a report would be simply blacked out on the tv here in Beijing. This time the tv went black for a few seconds then came back on. The conclusion of the talk host was that the restriction was in place because China wanted to develope a financial reporting
body equal in the world to Reutes, Bloomfields? etc. Were we allowed to enjoy this program because it wasn't human rights related? Is this part of Reporters Without Boarders claim of the Chinese campaign to crack down on the media?...
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