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Monday 15 December 2008
Chinese Reporter Chasing Corruption Claims Disappears
A Chinese newspaper reporter investigating a suspicious real estate deal has not been seen since hotel security tapes showed five men pushing him into a car two weeks ago, a local newspaper and a colleague said on Monday.
Chinese Reporter Chasing Corruption Claims Disappears
By Emma Graham-Harrison and Yu Le 15 December 2008
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese newspaper reporter investigating a suspicious real estate deal has not been seen since hotel security tapes showed five men pushing him into a car two weeks ago, a local newspaper and a colleague said on Monday.
The case appears to be the second in recent weeks involving reporters who colleagues said were targeted for probing graft in a part of northern China rich in both coal and corruption claims.
Guan Jian, reporter for the small Network News (Wangluo Bao) paper, was seized from a hotel lobby in north China’s Shanxi province on December 1 and forced into a waiting four-wheel drive, the Beijing News reported.
Video footage from the Jinjiang Inn showed Guan in the lobby when the men arrived and he had not contacted his family since, the paper cited his son as saying.
Guan was in the provincial capital, Taiyuan, looking into claims of possible illegal land-use by a real estate company with official connections, the report said, citing his editor.
A colleague of Guan surnamed Ren told Reuters that the Beijing News report was accurate. The Network News held a meeting to discuss Guan’s disappearance and decided the best course of action was to work with local police to try to find him.
Police in Taiyuan told Reuters that they were investigating the case, but declined to comment further.
Guan’s disappearance highlights the danger to reporters probing corruption in a country where officials are often close to business while also wielding power over police and courts. Killings of reporters are virtually unheard of, but beatings, detentions and arrests are a risk for those who take on the powerful.
Guan’s case follows the controversial arrest of a reporter from powerful state broadcaster China Central Television who was seized from her home in Beijing earlier this month by Shanxi prosecutors who claimed she took bribes.
The television reporter, Li Min, was investigating the prosecutors for a story when they travelled to Beijing to seize her, Chinese media said.
Provincial officials are not always able to extend their local power to control journalists in Beijing, whose employers often have government connections of their own.
A lawyer working for Li’s family said that she appeared to be the victim of a “terrifying” abuse of power to silence her work.
“This is a crude trampling on citizens’ constitutional rights to exercise oversight and criticize (officials),” the lawyer, Zhou Ze, said in a written statement.
A communist official from northeastern Liaoning province was sacked at the start of this year after he accused a journalist in Beijing of libelling him and ordered police to arrest her.
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Chinese Reporter Chasing Corruption Claims Disappears
By Emma Graham-Harrison and Yu Le
15 December 2008
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese newspaper reporter investigating a suspicious real estate deal has not been seen since hotel security tapes showed five men pushing him into a car two weeks ago, a local newspaper and a colleague said on Monday.
The case appears to be the second in recent weeks involving reporters who colleagues said were targeted for probing graft in a part of northern China rich in both coal and corruption claims.
Guan Jian, reporter for the small Network News (Wangluo Bao) paper, was seized from a hotel lobby in north China’s Shanxi province on December 1 and forced into a waiting four-wheel drive, the Beijing News reported.
Video footage from the Jinjiang Inn showed Guan in the lobby when the men arrived and he had not contacted his family since, the paper cited his son as saying.
Guan was in the provincial capital, Taiyuan, looking into claims of possible illegal land-use by a real estate company with official connections, the report said, citing his editor.
A colleague of Guan surnamed Ren told Reuters that the Beijing News report was accurate. The Network News held a meeting to discuss Guan’s disappearance and decided the best course of action was to work with local police to try to find him.
Police in Taiyuan told Reuters that they were investigating the case, but declined to comment further.
Guan’s disappearance highlights the danger to reporters probing corruption in a country where officials are often close to business while also wielding power over police and courts. Killings of reporters are virtually unheard of, but beatings, detentions and arrests are a risk for those who take on the powerful.
Guan’s case follows the controversial arrest of a reporter from powerful state broadcaster China Central Television who was seized from her home in Beijing earlier this month by Shanxi prosecutors who claimed she took bribes.
The television reporter, Li Min, was investigating the prosecutors for a story when they travelled to Beijing to seize her, Chinese media said.
Provincial officials are not always able to extend their local power to control journalists in Beijing, whose employers often have government connections of their own.
A lawyer working for Li’s family said that she appeared to be the victim of a “terrifying” abuse of power to silence her work.
“This is a crude trampling on citizens’ constitutional rights to exercise oversight and criticize (officials),” the lawyer, Zhou Ze, said in a written statement.
A communist official from northeastern Liaoning province was sacked at the start of this year after he accused a journalist in Beijing of libelling him and ordered police to arrest her.
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