A veteran Beijing-based journalist has moved to Taiwan, the BBC said on Wednesday (March 31), tweeting that journalist John Sudworth had left Beijing for Taiwan and that his reporting “revealed truths that the Chinese authorities do not want the world to know.
The statement added: “The BBC is proud of Sha Lei’s award-winning reporting during his Time in Beijing and he remains our correspondent covering China.”
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said Sha Lei had left mainland China on March 23 out of concern for his safety and that of his Family.
Sha Lei left China “after months of physical attacks and false information spread by Chinese official media and government officials against him and his BBC colleagues,” the FCCC tweeted.
The FCCC believes that this appears to be retaliation for his having crossed a “red line” on a range of issues, including reporting on the New crown outbreak and Xinjiang.
The Financial Times quoted two people familiar with the matter as saying that Sha Lei left Beijing just days before his visa was due to expire. Previously, he had been granted visas valid for three months or less, and they had all been renewed at the last minute. The same is true for other journalists who have been criticized by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and official media for their reporting. Typically, visas for journalists in China are valid for one year, and visa renewals take place weeks before the expiration date.
An annual report released by the FCCC in March of this year said that media freedom in China is rapidly declining in 2020. In addition to the usual intimidation and visa restrictions, China is using the new crown Epidemic as a new means of restricting foreign media, the report said.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ou Jiang-an told Reuters that the ministry does not comment on individual cases, but she also said that all media journalists are welcome in Taiwan to visit in order to enjoy freedom of the press and expression.
Sha Lei has been a journalist in China for the past few years and has reported on China issues many times. He has reported on what really happened inside the internment camps in the Xinjiang region, for which he won the George Polk Award.
In an article, the Global Times, the Communist Party’s official media outlet, attacked Sha Lei as a journalist with a “shady record” whose reports “slander” China. The article also said that Sha Lei’s departure was due to the fact that “the defamed and hurt Xinjiang enterprises and people” were ready to take legal action to defend their interests.
Beijing has repeatedly criticized the BBC’s reports by name. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has called many of the BBC’s reports strongly ideologically biased and unbalanced. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Wednesday also retweeted a tweet calling the BBC the British Bias Corporation.
In February, China’s State Administration of Radio and Television decided not to allow the BBC World News to remain in China.
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