Tibet Post International
Yeshe Choesang,
January 31, 2017
Paris, France —“As China and its president, Xi Jinping, prepare to celebrate the New Year on 28 January, RSF is concerned about the unprecedented decline in freedom of information” in China, the The Paris world media watch-dog “Reporters Without Borders” (RSF) said in a statement.
Huang Qi, a citizen journalist who founded the 64 Tianwang news website, was arrested exactly three months ago. The RSF said it calls for his unconditional release and the release of all the other citizen journalists and bloggers imprisoned in China.
The online activist Huang Qi was jailed exactly three months ago on a charge of “divulging state secrets,” according to the regime. The website he founded, 64Tianwang, was the first human rights website to be established in China and continues to be one of the few such sites operating inside the country.
Reprisals against journalists and bloggers continued and even intensified in 2016, making China the world’s biggest prison for journalists and bloggers, with more than 100 currently detained.
They include the well-known journalist Gao Yu, the Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, the Uyghur intellectual and journalist Ilham Tohti, and the citizen journalists Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu, who were awarded RSF’s Press Freedom Prize in 2016, as was 64Tianwang.
“In 2017, China continues to be on RSF’s list of “enemies of the Internet” while President Xi is still on RSF’s list of “press freedom predators.” China is nowadays ranked 176th out of 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index,” RSF added.
As well as building a Great Firewall to monitor and control blogs and social networks, the Communist Party exercises total control over China’s many media outlets. Independent journalists are harassed and jailed.
Those journalists or writers who found critical of the government, are accused of leaking classified documents listing “ten perils to combat” that included media independence. “Making unauthorized criticisms” is one of the many bans to which journalists are subjected. It reinforces an already formidable arsenal that includes the state secrets law and the criminal code.
China’s poor respect for, and abuse of, human rights in Tibet continues, that includes arbitrary arrest or detention, torture, total denial of freedom of speech and press freedom, public assembly and association, freedom of religion, freedom of movement and economy discrimination and social abuse.
Many governments and parliaments expressed their concerns that every aspect of Tibetan life is under siege and Tibetans have even fewer civil and political rights than Chinese people also ruled by the one party authoritarian regime. The regime enforces its control over every aspect through the threat and use of arbitrary punishments, at times including severe violence. Any act deemed to threaten its rule normal to become a serious criminal offence.
RSF again ranked China (include Tibet) 176 out of the 180 countries on its Press Freedom Index 2016. International media reports stated ‘there are more foreign journalists in North Korea than Tibet,’ making Tibet one of most difficult places in the world. Tibetans in Tibet reported receiving official threats and warnings after using their cell phones to exchange what the government deemed to be “national secrecy or political sensitivity.”
