(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Ding Guangen, director of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) publicity department, RSF expressed concern at sanctions taken against a journalist and economist, He Qinglian. RSF urged Ding Guangen to ensure that the journalist is “reinstated in her editorial staff position with ‘Shenzhen Legal Daily’ and authorised to publish anew”. […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Ding Guangen, director of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) publicity department, RSF expressed concern at sanctions taken against a journalist and economist, He Qinglian. RSF urged Ding Guangen to ensure that the journalist is “reinstated in her editorial staff position with ‘Shenzhen Legal Daily’ and authorised to publish anew”. This sanction comes at a time when the Chinese authorities are engaged in a crackdown that is, according to RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard, in “contradiction with the international commitments of China and particularly the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees press freedom.”
According to the information obtained by RSF, the authorities forced the management of the “Shenzhen Legal Daily” to remove He Qinglian from her editorial staff position. Upon her return from a lecture tour in the United States on 21 June 2000, her boss told her that she was being moved to the newspaper’s research department, that her salary would be frozen and that she could no longer write for the daily. The managing editor of the newspaper told her that these sanctions were at the behest of “high authorities.” He Qinglian is also banned from publishing her articles throughout China. The sanctions appear to be linked to an article in the March issue of “Shuwu Magazine” in which she denounced the gap between rich and poor and criticised corruption within the Communist Party “elite”. She is also the author of a book “China’s Pitfall” which has sold more than 100,000 copies, and was described as a “masterpiece” by Liu Ji, one of President Jiang Zemin’s most influential advisers.
The Chinese authorities have recently announced the first “results” of an ideological campaign launched last March against “liberals and rightists”. In an interview given on 13 June to the official news agency Xinhua, a director of the State Press and Publications Administration said a new “warning system” had been adopted in order to “help newspapers adhere to the guiding status of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.” This campaign has already led to sanctions against a dozen newspapers and publishing houses. Some of them, including Today China Press, Reform Press and East Wind Press, were closed down. Beijing authorities also banned the publication throughout China of articles written by “liberal scholars”, such as Li Shenzhi, He Jiadong and Liu Junning.
