China gears up for Winter Olympics amid warning over declining press freedom
Families are told to limit the size of Lunar New Year gatherings, while petitioners are placed under house arrest.
As China gears up for the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics, foreign journalists working in the country warned on Monday that press freedom is declining ‘at breakneck speed.”
While foreign journalists have long faced challenging conditions under the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), now they are also dealing with growing hostility and intimidation, including online stalking, smear campaigns, hacking and visa denials, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said in its annual report.
As the number of journalists forced out by the Chinese state grows, covering China is increasingly becoming an exercise in remote reporting, the report said.
“With China pulling out all the stops for the Olympic Games, the FCCC is troubled by the breakneck speed by which media freedom is declining in China,” it said, citing 99 percent of foreign journalists as saying in a recent survey that reporting conditions fall below international standards.
Restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic have enabled officials to delay approvals for new journalist visas, cancel reporting trips outside of Beijing, and turn down requests for interviews, the report said.
Nearly half of respondents said their bureaus are understaffed due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, with more than half saying they had been denied access to news-makers or places due to pandemic restrictions.
“Coverage of China is suffering,” the FCCC said. “Nothing replaces on-the-ground reporting, free of state obstruction and surveillance.”
More than 60 percent of respondents had been obstructed by police or officials last year, while almost all journalists who went to Xinjiang were visible followed throughout their trips, while more than a quarter said their sources had been detained, harassed, or questioned more than once following interviews.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES