The association of defense of the freedom of the press estimates that at least 127 journalists are in custody throughout the country.
Le Monde with AFP
No less than 71 or not journalists, professionals or not, are in detention in China as part of the repression of this Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the north-west of the country, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Tuesday 7 December.
In a report entitled “The big leap back of journalism in China”, the association of defense of the freedom of the press denounces “an unprecedented repression campaign led by the Chinese regime in recent years against the Journalism and the right to information around the world “. According to RSF, at least 127 journalists are in custody throughout the country.
The Ouïgours are the most many among them, while the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has committed in recent years a remission in Xinjiang, following attacks attributed to Islamists or separatists from this ethnic group.
More than one million Ouity were locked up in political rehabilitation centers, according to human rights associations. Beijing challenges this figure and talks about vocational training centers to keep the “trainees” away from radicalization.
“Black-out on information”
The communist regime has imposed “a blackout on the information” in Xinjiang by de facto de facto the independent reports on the ground, estimates the journalist Uyghur Gulchehra Hoja, cited in the report.
Among the authors held in detention appears the intellectual Ilham Tohti, the winner of the Sakharov 2019 Prize of the European Parliament, and who held a website identifying problems encountered by his minority. Gulmira imin, director of another website, is imprisoned since 2009.
m. XI has “brutally ended” to the hopes of improving the freedom of the press in China, said the Secretary General of RSF, Christophe DeLoire. Last year, eighteen foreign reporters had to leave the country and an Australian journalist working for Chinese television, Cheng Lei, was arrested.
At least ten journalists, professionals or not, were arrested because they had covered, at the beginning of 2020, the taxation of the quarantine in the city of Wuhan, in the center of the country, where the COVID-19 was initially discovered. One of them, Zhang Zhan, was sentenced to four years in prison. According to his relatives, the days of this “citizens journalist”, who observes a hunger strike, are counted.