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Chinese authorities assault journalists at hotel in Beijing

Chinese authorities assaulted three journalists from a Japanese news agency in their Beijing hotel room, kicking them and destroying two computers, the agency said early yesterday.

The three journalists from Kyodo News were in the Chinese capital covering a National Day rehearsal when authorities stormed into the room of their hotel on Friday night, the news agency said.

Kyodo said a reporter and two cameramen were kicked “and hit on their heads to make them kneel down,” without specifying who the “authorities” were.

It also did not disclose the nationality of the three journalists.

The attackers threw the two computers out of the room and into the corridor of the hotel, which is near Tiananmen Square, the venue of the National Day celebrations scheduled for Oct. 1.

China’s Foreign Ministry had ordered news organizations not to take photos when the country conducted a rehearsal on Sept. 6, but the ministry has not issued such an order since then, Kyodo said.

Security forces have swarmed over central Beijing in the lead-up to a parade that will mark 60 years since the founding of Communist China.

Businesses, schools and traffic shut down as columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other hardware rumbled down the city’s deserted main east-west thoroughfare, the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, and toward Tiananmen Square.

Security forces had earlier swarmed over central Beijing, shooing citizens away from what will be the parade’s route through the heart of the city.

Earlier this week, hundreds of journalists protested in Hong Kong against alleged police brutality toward three of their colleagues covering alleged syringe attacks in China’s restive Xinjiang region.

Meanwhile, a man attacked a French tourist with a knife yesterday near Tiananmen Square, in the second knife attack in the area in two days, state media reported.

The woman was slightly injured and was taken to a hospital, Xinhua news agency said. It did not identify her.

Xinhua said a 41-year-old man from Nanchang in southeast Jiangxi Province injured the French woman on Dashilan, Beijing’s oldest commercial street, near the southern end of Tiananmen Square.

It said patrolling policemen caught the man at the scene.
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