In a year of declining press freedom amid the global pandemic, China took the lead in media repression
The Australian Embassy in Beijing revealed on August 31 the arrest without official cause of the famous economic news presenter, Cheng Lei , an Australian of Chinese origin working for the state audio-visual group China Global Television Network (CGTN). The Chinese authorities have since confirmed that the journalist has been placed, for more than two weeks already, under “residential surveillance in a designated place” (RSDL), a euphemism which refers to incommunicado detention in “black prisons” where the detainees are. deprived of their rights and at risk of being subjected to torture
Jimmy Lai , 71, the founder of the Hong Kong pro-democracy daily Apple Daily , was arrested at his home on the morning of August 10, 2020 on charges of “collusion with foreign powers”
Censors at the social media platform Weibo were meanwhile stepping up warnings to platform users that they could be pursued for comments deemed to be “attacks on government departments or state media agencies.”
Freedom of the press, officially guaranteed by Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution, was one of the great demands of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, crushed in blood by the Chinese regime on June 4, 1989 with a toll of several thousand dead. Thirty-one years later, the state apparatus and the Chinese Communist Party continue to flout this fundamental right on a daily basis and are now trying to extend their liberticidal practices to the rest of the world, as shown in a report published last year by RSF.
Unhappy with its 177th out of 180 rankings in the World Press Freedom Index, China maintains that foreign journalists are “welcome”. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recalls that the regime is harassing press correspondents and has just expelled 13 of them
Wuhan Central Hospital emergency department director Ai Fen and a group of doctors launched the alert online on December 30. Eight of them, including Doctor Li Wenliang , who died after the illness, will be arrested by the police on January 3 for having circulated “false rumors”
RSF denounces this scandalous travesty of justice and calls on democracies around the world to pressure China to release Gui Minhai and all other imprisoned journalists and bloggers