Today, the British Broadcaster said that a crew of BBC reporters in China was attacked by a mob and later forced to sign a police confession for attempting an illegal interview.
The BBC journalists were trying to reach a woman in Xinhua county in southern Hunan province of China. She claims that her father was killed during a land dispute. A group of men confronted BBC journalists on Sunday, in an incident later condemned by foreign correspondents’ association of China.
In an online article, Correspondent John Sudworth wrote that as soon as we arrived in Yang Linghua’s village it was clear they were expecting us. The road to her house was blocked by a large group of people and, within a few minutes, they assaulted us and smashed all of our cameras.
As per his article that police and local government officials forced them to delete video footage under the threat of further violence and sign a confession apologising for behaviour causing a bad impact.
A video footage of the incident can be showed on the BBC website. The video footage showed a violent attack that left at least one member of the crew with minor cuts to their hands.
In a statement on Friday, the foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said that this violent effort to deter news coverage is a gross violation of Chinese government rules governing foreign correspondents, which expressly permit them to interview anybody who consents to be interviewed.
The 2016 FCCC survey of working conditions for correspondents released in the month of November 2016. In this report, we found that 57% of correspondents had been subjected to some form of interference, harassment or violence while attempting to report in China.
