Today is World Press Freedom Day. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution designating this day as such in 1993.
Its main purpose is to stress the importance of freedom of the press and protection of journalists. These are fundamental conditions for any country that wants to develop democratic politics, initiate political reform and promote prosperity.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
BASIC HUMAN RIGHT
Thus, press freedom is a basic human right. Building an independent and autonomous media environment and protecting freedom of opinion and expression are both symbols of an advanced and modern country.
Today, through its tight monitoring and control of newspapers, television, radio stations and even the Internet, China has comprehensive restrictions on its people and prevents them freely circulating ideas relating to human rights, democracy and freedom.
It also minimizes their opportunities to express their own opinions.
Now, with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China is attempting to improve its image in the areas of human rights and press freedom.
PROMISES
On the one hand, Beijing promised the international community that it would ensure freedom of the press and agreed to loosen restrictions on travel for foreign journalists.
On the other, it has been expanding the monitoring and control of media outlets and journalists, and has strengthened the suppression and persecution of political dissidents and human rights activists.
In March, China attracted considerable international attention by cracking down on peaceful demonstrations by Tibetans.
The result was violent persecution.
Then, using regional stability as an excuse, China expelled foreign journalists from Tibet in an attempt to block news about the government’s suppression of the local population.
Official Chinese media outlets then distorted the facts and defamed Tibetan people while covering up how soldiers and police arrested, imprisoned and killed local residents.
MESSAGE
The authorities will now wait until the situation stabilizes before choosing a more appropriate time to reopen Tibet to Western journalists so that they can spread the message at home and abroad that Tibet is calm.
But if its crackdown was reasonable, legitimate and legal, then why did it have to expel foreign journalists in the first place?
Such a pointed blockade of news and banishment of foreign journalists highlights the nature of the Chinese government, which openly deprives the press of its freedoms so that it can maintain control of media content.
The bloody crackdown in Tibet and the corresponding crackdown on press freedom in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics have deepened the international community’s impression of China as an authoritarian regime opposed to democracy and human rights.
This behavior violates the Olympic ideal of promoting peace and respect for human rights through sports.
Chen Lung-chu is the chairman of the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
Translated by Eddy Chang
As Taiwan strives to attract more international students, yet another embarrassing incident of mistreatment came to light this week. The incident, involving students from Uganda, is yet another blemish on the nation’s human rights record, which is otherwise progressive. Online media firm The Reporter wrote in an investigative report that Ugandan students at Chung Chou University of Science and Technology in Changhua County’s Yuanlin City (員林) were denied promised scholarships and forced to work overnight factory shifts after they had been promised “paid internship opportunities.” There were also few classes in English compared with what was advertised, students said. Like many migrant workers
US-China relations are built on a series of fabrications about Taiwan. In fact, one of the major reasons the US-China relationship is so contentious right now is that Chinese belligerence is exposing these carefully constructed fictions to common sense. Readers know the story. In the 1970s and 1980s, American officials said what they needed to make common cause with Beijing vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Diplomats couldn’t talk about Taiwan as a “country” — let alone an independent one — which it so clearly is. They enshrined in US policy that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there
Once a month, a government vehicle pulls up outside Government House, the official residence of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥), and an official from the Treasury Bureau alights to deliver a case laden with wads of Hong Kong dollar bank notes. Like the godfather of a mafia organization, Lam stockpiles her monthly salary in cash at her home. This is because Lam, who earns an annual salary of HK$5.2 million (US$667,517) and is one of the world’s highest-paid leaders, has no bank account. After Lam colluded with Beijing to impose a new National Security Law on the territory in
As we embark upon a new year, tensions across the Taiwan Strait continue to heighten by the day. While countries around the world are preoccupied with combating a fresh wave of COVID-19, China is using the opportunity to employ increasingly repressive measures in Hong Kong, Xinjiang — particularly to Turkic Uighurs — and Inner Mongolia. Meanwhile, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is using every method at its disposal to continue to harass Taiwan, elevating the Taiwan Strait on a par with Ukraine as an issue of primary concern for the international community. Paradoxically, Taiwan’s economic and trade dependence on China has not declined,
RSS