(RSF/IFEX) – On 3 September 2002, RSF protested the 31 August raid carried out by police in Beijing at the home of Yeo Shi-Dong, a correspondent for the South Korean newspaper “Chosun Ilbo”. The police seized his identification papers and files on North Korean refugees in China. “The authorities are once again issuing veiled threats […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 3 September 2002, RSF protested the 31 August raid carried out by police in Beijing at the home of Yeo Shi-Dong, a correspondent for the South Korean newspaper “Chosun Ilbo”. The police seized his identification papers and files on North Korean refugees in China.
“The authorities are once again issuing veiled threats to foreign journalists who cover sensitive issues,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan. “Such systematic intimidation can only lead to self-censorship and clearly belies the supposed opening that Beijing claims,” Ménard said, while calling for the return of the journalist’s files and an end to the harassment of foreign journalists who work in China.
Yeo Shi-Dong’s home, which is also his office, was raided by the police shortly before midnight (local time) on 31 August. Without showing a warrant or offering the journalist any explanation, the police searched the premises and questioned him for two hours about his movements, his family and his recent change of residence. They took documents relating to his investigation into North Korean refugees, his passport and the passports of family members, his Chinese residence certificate and his press card.
Before leaving, the police informed him that he had broken the law by failing to report his recent change of address to the local police station. He was fined the next day at the immigration office. This is the first time such a regulation has been invoked. Until now, foreign correspondents were only required to notify the Foreign Ministry when changing residence, a requirement that Yeo Shi-Dong had complied with.
On 26 August, Yeo Shi-Dong wrote an article about the arrest of several North Korean dissidents who had tried to force their way into a Chinese Foreign Ministry building to ask for refugee status. His newspaper, for its part, has criticised China’s position on North Korean dissidents on several occasions, calling on the authorities to grant them refugee status in the name of human rights, instead of sending them back to North Korea.
