Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 38 I will go back to 2006 to shed a little light about how the Chinese government has brought these new regulations into effect. In the past, the Foreign Ministry did not recognize the Foreign Correspondents Club. They still don't. We did not have any communication. We had a meeting in the spring of 2006 which was quite interesting. We had three members from the Foreign Correspondents Club and two people from the Foreign Ministry. That's when they started to float a trial balloon about what we could consider to be free reporting during the Olympics - or at least that is my interpretation. Before, every time Beijing correspondents wanted to report in a local area we would have to get permission from the local Foreign Ministry office. Of course, if you were going to cover a sensitive topic, you wouldn't apply. It became a cat and mouse game. Some people would go to an HIV-AIDS village in the middle of the night and then leave and hope the authorities would not find them. Then the Foreign Ministry suggested that rather than ask permission, you could send a fax and inform the local foreign affairs office you are coming. We said, “Well, if it is voluntary...” They then came out with the new regulations, which are actually more liberal than we had expected. It basically says that to interview organizations or individuals in China, foreign journalists need only obtain their prior consent. And that is our key phrase. We advise anyone going to China to carry a copy of the regulations. Download it from the Internet. Carry it with you in Chinese and in English in case you run into obstacles. Of course, if they really don't want you, they will just say “Well, we have a counter-regulation,” which will not be produced. But give it a try. We did a survey last July on how were these regulations were working. And we found quite a few cases in which they had not been observed. We put out a statement ahead of the Olympics saying that China had not yet met the requirements as we understood them. The government was furious. They said, essentially, “Why don't you commend us for making an effort and making these improvements.” A couple of days later there was a glowing piece in English on the front page of the China Daily saying how wonderful conditions were for foreign correspondents. Of course, not a single correspondent was quoted in the story. That was their response. We did find improvements. Conditions for foreign correspondents in China are better now than they were before the regulations. However, they are nowhere near what one would expect of an Olympic host nation. In October, we sent a list of cases to the International Olympic Committee, including examples of several journalists who had been assaulted, together with our recommendations of how to improve working conditions. Basically we did not get a response. One of our board members met in private with an IOC official and was told there was nothing the committee could do.
Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 39 There has been progress due to the Olympics. We have a lot more press conferences now. The government wants to say how many hundreds of events it organized, and we say, “Yes, but the person up there didn't answer any questions.” However, some officials are getting better at answering questions, but it is still a major problem. There is a government information disclosure act that comes into force on May 1, and I think this is a positive move but one that needs to be watched and tested very carefully, hopefully by foreign correspondents as well as Chinese reporters or whoever else would like to get information from the government. There are areas that are very disturbing still. Journalists are still not free to travel to any Tibetan regions. We have been told that the information about people convicted for violations of state secrecy laws is being hidden. Where do we go from here? One effort we are working on at the Foreign Correspondents Club is a media rights campaign. We have members who have been illegally searched, or who have had their materials taken illegally by authorities. Many foreign correspondents are not aware of the legal rights they enjoy or should enjoy in China. Hopefully, we will be providing more information about what these rights are and what correspondents should do if someone in authority stops them. We are also concerned about how to protect sources better. Are there legal means that we can use when there are sources who want to speak to us and who are prevented from doing so? What can we do to protect them if they get into trouble after we speak to them? We also intend to bring up in discussions the increase in cyber-attacks against people who speak out in favor of free media and free expression in China.
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