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Press release
3 DECEMBER 2004
CHINA
Reformist journalists
and intellectuals punished and censored
Reporters Without Borders has alerted the European
delegation to the EU-China summit in the Netherlands
on 8 December that China has launched a new crackdown
against reformists.
The Propaganda Department blacklisted six renowned
political commentators from the state-owned press in
November 2004. The
authorities have also curbed coverage on the role of
intellectuals in the development of China. Journalist
Wang Guangze has been sacked under official pressure.
As Prime Minister Wen Jiabao attends the EU-China
summit, a new wave of censorship and repression has
been unleashed, said the worldwide press freedom
organisation.
These sanctions from another age, sidelining liberals
from political life, threatened to damage the
credibility of reforms instituted by Wen Jibao's
government, it said.
Some 25 Chinese journalists and 62 cyberdissidents are
currently imprisoned, the organisation pointed out.
The Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department at
the start of November ordered official media to stop
publishing articles from the six reformist political
commentators.
Among them was Jiao Guobiao professor of journalism at
Beijing University, who called for the propaganda
department to be abolished and for the holding of free
elections. The university, under official pressure,
cancelled his journalism course in September.
The China Information Centre identified the other five
blacklisted commentators as: veteran communist party
member Li Rui, writers and political editorialists
Wang Yi and Yu Jie, the director of the Tianze
Economic Research Institute, Mao Yushi and Yao Lifa, a
peasants' rights activist in Hubei Province, eastern
China. The Propaganda Department has been waging a
struggle against reformist intellectuals, banning them
from using the state-owned press to publicly raise
concerns about the country's poorest and to promote
social justice.
Finally, Wang Guangze, of the bi-weekly Ershiyi shiji
jingji baodao (The 21st Century Business Herald) was
sacked on 23 November on his return from the United
States where he attended, with official permission, a
seminar on ethics and new technology at Trinity
College Connecticut. Wang, 32, gave a paper entitled,
"The development and possible evolution of political
ecology in China in the age of the Internet"
His talk focused on how the Internet is currently
transforming the political landscape and civil society,
despite official controls.
On his return the journalist was told he had been
dismissed for being "absent" and for "poor quality
work" over the previous two months for his newspaper,
published by the press group Nanfang Daily. Wang was
however quoted by Hong Kong daily South China Morning
Post as saying that he had been promised a promotion
before he left for the United States.
"The authorities have learned newer, more
sophisticated and very effective techniques to control
the press," he added.
Wang suffered four years of unemployment after being
dismissed from the Legal Daily in 1999 for defending
the wife of a pro-democracy dissident.
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