A French journalist said she is prepared to leave China and does not expect authorities to renew her media credentials because of her reporting of Beijing’s efforts to equate ethnic violence in the western Muslim region with international terrorism.
Ursula Gauthier, a long-time journalist for the French news magazine L’Obs, late on Friday said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded she issue a public apology and distance herself from any group that should present her case as infringement of media freedom in China.
Left with no room for negotiations, she said she plans to leave on Dec. 31, when her visa expires.
“They want a public apology for things that I have not written,” Gauthier said. “They are accusing me of writing things that I have not written.”
The fallout began with Gauthier’s Nov. 18 article, shortly after the attacks in Paris. She wrote that Beijing’s proclaimed solidarity with Paris is not without ulterior motives, as Beijing seeks international support for its assertion that the ethnic violence in the Muslim region of Xinjiang is part of international terrorism.
Gauthier wrote that some of the violent attacks in Xinjiang appeared to be homegrown with no evidence of foreign ties — an observation that has been made by numerous foreign experts on security and Xinjiang’s ethnic policies and practices.
Advocacy groups have argued that the violence is more likely to be a response to Beijing’s suppressive policies in Xinjiang.
In her article, Gauthier focused on a deadly mine attack in a remote region of Xinjiang, which she described as more likely an act by Uighurs against mine workers of the majority Han ethnic group over what the Uighurs perceived as mistreatment, injustice and exploitation.
The article quickly drew stern criticism from state media and the Chinese government.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized Western media for using double standards in reporting on the violence and said that terrorism should not be considered ethnic violence in Xinjiang.
“Why is terrorism in other countries called terrorist actions, but it turns out to be ethnic and religious issues in China?” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said at a news briefing on Dec. 2.
By then, state media had carried abusive editorials against Gauthier, accusing her of having deep prejudice against China.
On Friday, Gauthier said that the ministry demanded her apology for “hurting Chinese people’s feelings with wrong and hateful actions and words,” and to publicly state that she recognizes that there have been terrorist attacks in and outside Xinjiang.
“What they are doing is just to show all the foreign correspondents here what you get if you write whatever is not palatable to Chinese authorities. That’s the message,” Gauthier said.
If Gauthier does not get her media credentials renewed by the end of year, she will become the first foreign journalist to be forced to leave China since US journalist Melissa Chan, then working for al-Jazeera in Beijing, was expelled in 2012.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS