24 January 2007
REPORTER BEATEN TO DEATH AT ILLEGAL MINE
The owner of a mine in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi has been arrested in connection with the death of a newspaper employee who was severely beaten on 9 January. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) are investigating the murder to determine whether it was directly related to the victim's work as a journalist.
On 9 January, Lan Chenzhang was brutally beaten by unidentified men while visiting an illegal coal mine in Huiyuan County with a colleague. He died the next day in a hospital in Datong. Lan, 35, had been working for the Shanxi bureau of the Beijing-based newspaper "China Trade News" ("Zhongguo Maoyi Bao") for less than a month and was on probation. His colleague, Chang Hanwen, was also beaten but survived.
Lan's death was first reported by an anonymous user on the online chat forum Tianya. Chinese journalists who went to investigate Lan's death were prevented by police from entering the hospital where Lan died, reported the International Press Institute (IPI).
Local officials claimed that Lan was not a legitimate journalist because he did not have official certification. They said Lan went to the mine to extort money from the owner in exchange for not reporting on the illegal operation.
IPI says violent attacks on journalists are an increasingly common trend in China. In 2006, two journalists died after being beaten. Wu Xianghu, deputy editor of the newspaper "Taizhou Wanbao", died on 2 February from injuries sustained when traffic police in the city of Taizhou, Zhejiang province, attacked him on 20 October 2005. The attack followed a report in his newspaper on the high fees charged for motorcycle licenses.
Xiao Guopeng, a reporter for the daily Anshun, was beaten to death on 18 July by a police officer outside his newspaper's offices in Guizhou province.
CPJ has also found that journalists who report on corruption and crime are increasingly being attacked by individuals or groups implicated in their reports. It has documented at least 20 such attacks since 2002.
Visit these links:
- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/news/2007/asia/china16jan07na.html
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=20430
- IPI: http://tinyurl.com/2daxcb
- New Journalism, New Threats: http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2004/China_8_04/China_8_04.html
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