The Communist Party continues to expand its crackdown and persecution of foreign journalists covering the forced labor controversy in Xinjiang.
Following the forced evacuation of BBC reporter John Sudworth from Beijing and his transfer to Taipei, Chinese-Australian journalist Vicky Xu has become the latest target of the Communist Party’s major foreign propaganda campaign.
Xu, a 90-year-old journalist, has been attacked by more than a dozen official CCP media outlets since early April, using terms such as “demon woman and traitor woman” and falsely accusing her of being the “originator of Xinjiang cotton,” sparking the latest wave of online storms on Weibo and other social media. .
Although both journalists declined to be interviewed by the media, Sha Lei called attention to the “asymmetric media war” waged by the Chinese Communist Party in a written statement.
Xu Xiuzhong, who is originally from Gansu, tweeted that he would continue to report on Xinjiang, “until the training center closes and until forced labor ends.”
Chinese Communist Party Crackdown on Foreign Media Reporters
Photo: Wei-Ang Ai, executive director of Reporters Without Borders’ East Asia office
In response, RSF East Asia Executive Cedric Alviani and two foreign journalists with experience working in China unanimously called on democratic governments to take immediate joint action against the CCP’s ongoing crackdown on press freedom and the continued persecution and imprisonment of foreign journalists and Chinese citizen journalists in an interview with Voice of America.
It is clear that over the past year, the Chinese Communist government has become increasingly unwilling to have foreign journalists in China to provide direct access to and monitor its governance, said Ai Wei’ang.
The regime has repeatedly harassed foreign journalists to make sure they can’t report (the truth),” Ai said. (BBC reporter) Sha Lei was forced to leave China as a direct result of such harassment. In the past year alone, the Chinese Communist Party has expelled a total of 18 foreign media reporters. This is totally unacceptable.”
Sha Lei, a BBC journalist who has worked in Beijing for nine years, has come under intense pressure and threats for reporting on sensitive topics such as the origins of the Chinese Communist Party’s virus in China, cotton in Xinjiang and forced labor for Uighurs. Sha Lei confirmed last week that he and his wife, Yvonne Murray, who is also a journalist for the Irish public broadcaster RTE, and their three young children had left Beijing and transferred to Taipei after Communist Party security officials followed them all the way to the airport. He said the couple will continue to cover China from Taipei in the future.
The BBC previously tweeted a statement: “Sha Lei’s work reveals the truth that the Chinese Communist authorities don’t want the world to know.”
BBC reporter forced to leave Beijing
On Friday (April 2), Sha Lei published an article titled “The Grim Reality Of Reporting In China That Pushed Me Out”.
He said he was the latest example of foreign media pulling out of China as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s global war on ideas and information.
Since taking power in 2012, he writes, “(CCP President) Xi Jinping has used the CCP’s rigid political system to tighten control at nearly every social level …… The media has become a representative battleground under his presidency.”
He said that while the foreign media’s space to report in China is tightening, the Communist Party’s “war wolf” diplomats have been able to enjoy a free and open media platform overseas, tweeting articles against the BBC or other foreign media reports.
In this context, he said, “My departure can be seen as part of an emerging, highly asymmetrical war of thought control. …… Having less access to China will weaken our understanding of China’s reality, but the CCP is able to use the system of free media outside the country to undermine its democratic debate.”
Foreign media creating fake news about Xinjiang?
Sha Lei’s evacuation from Beijing due to “security concerns” drew attacks from official Chinese Communist Party and Party media such as the Global Times. At one point, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying mocked, “What’s he running for?”
Hua said some people and companies in Xinjiang are allegedly planning to sue Sha Lei because of his “fake news” about Xinjiang, but she said this is a private action and has nothing to do with the government.
In a regular press conference last Thursday (April 1), Hua Chunying further attacked the Foreign Correspondent Club in China in Beijing as an “illegal organization that does not talk about right and wrong or principles.”
The Global Times also followed up the official narrative with a biased report claiming that Sha Lei had “fled” Beijing and was “hiding” in Taiwan, as if he were a fugitive from justice.
In response, Wei-Ang Ai of Reporters Without Borders said that foreign journalists have formed associations around the world to network and share information with each other. But only in totalitarian countries such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are they considered “illegal organizations” because the CCP uses registration to pressure and harass foreign journalists.
Communist Party jails hundreds of journalists
He said it is increasingly difficult for journalists like Sha Lei to report independently in China, and that those who insist on telling the truth in particular often face jail time. According to Reporters Without Borders, the Chinese Communist Party has so far imprisoned some 120 media workers, including citizen journalists.
Ai Wei’ang called on democratic governments to adopt a united front as soon as possible to resist the Chinese Communist Party’s attacks on universal values such as freedom of the press and expression, and the persecution of media workers.
Following the transfer of Sha Lei to Taipei, the European Union issued a statement on Friday (April 2) condemning the harassment of journalists working in China by Beijing authorities. The statement said, “The EU remains concerned about the undue work restrictions imposed by the Chinese Communist authorities on foreign journalists and the related reports of harassment.”
In addition to Sha Lei, the Chinese Communist Party has also launched an online attack on Chinese-Australian journalist Xu Xiuzhong, using unpleasant terms such as “demoness and traitoress” to describe the journalist, who graduated from the Communication University of China and now works for major international media in Sydney, Australia.
According to Xu’s 15 recent Chinese Twitter posts, she began writing about forced labor in Xinjiang and the experiences of the Uyghur community in 2017. The English-language stories, which were published by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the New York Times, were intended, she said, to “set the stage for history.
In March last year, the Australian Institute for Strategic Studies, where she works, released a study, “Uyghurs on Sale,” which accused the Chinese Communist government of sending Uyghurs into forced labor across the country under the banner of “aid to Xinjiang” and named the supply chains of 83 companies, including Nike and Apple, as being involved.
She said the report did not mention the issue of Xinjiang cotton, but recently, a large number of Chinese media reports have falsely accused her of being the “originator of Xinjiang cotton” and made negative character attacks against her.
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She tweeted, “If there was a hint of silence before, it’s gone after the internet storm. I had to keep writing until the “Education and Training Center” closed, until the end of forced labor, until the end of time. From my personal point of view, the right thing to do is to continue, and the price to pay is worth it. I owe it to the people around me to do the right thing, and I’m going to pay it back.”
She added, “The root cause of the ‘education and training centers’ that hold Uyghurs and other minorities is the complete destruction of the Uyghur people and culture by the Han-led government.”
Xu Xiuzhong said state security agents have coerced her family in China, including detention, interrogation, harassment and isolation. Late last year, she said, a state security agent calling himself Detective “Thomas” also spread pornographic novel-like “sex life” stories on Youtube in broken English, slut-shaming her.
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