New York, June 23, 2011--Authorities in Shandong should overturn a second prison sentence handed down to freelance journalist Qi Chonghuai just days before the end of his term, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Two of three Chinese journalists scheduled for release this month are out of jail. Artist Ai Weiwei was unexpectedly freed from extrajudicial detention on Wednesday. 

Top Developments
• More access for foreign reporters, tighter rules for local assistants.
• As online use grows, government censors sites, jails critics.

136 journalists jailed worldwide

As of December 1, 2009    |   » Read the accompanying report: "FREELANCERS UNDER FIRE"

New York, November 24, 2009—After almost 18 months in detention, prominent Internet publisher and human rights activist Huang Qi was sentenced to three years imprisonment on Monday by a court in Wuhou in China’s Sichuan province. The sentencing hearing lasted 10 minutes, according to international news reports. Police in Chengdu detained Huang on June 10, 2008, on charges of illegally holding state secrets and convicted him in August. Huang had been a prominent critic of the government’s response to the Sichuan earthquake disaster in May 2008.

Madeline Earp, CPJ Asia research associate, testified in Washington today before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission at a public hearing on “China’s Media and Information Controls: The Impact in China and the United States.” 

In the year of the “One World, One Dream” Olympics, China’s punitive and highly restrictive press policies became a global issue. International reporters who arrived early to prepare for the Games flocked to cover antigovernment riots in Tibet and western provinces in March and the Sichuan earthquake in May. They encountered the sweeping official interference that resident journalists have long faced every day. Domestic news media, which by law must be sponsored by official government bodies, generally followed the government line on Tibetan and Olympic issues, although some newspapers and magazines distinguished themselves with breaking coverage of the earthquake and investigative reporting on local government corruption. Online writers who published more outspoken pieces were jailed on antistate charges.

Journalists in prison as of December 1, 2008

Read the accompanying report: "Online and in jail"

New York, June 18, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by the continued detention of prominent Internet publisher and human rights activist Huang Qi. Police in Chengdu detained Huang on June 10 on charges of “illegally holding state secrets” according to local and international news reports, some of which quoted his lawyer, Mo Shaoping.

New York, June 13, 2008—Chinese police arrested Internet writer Zeng Hongling in Chengdu, the capital of the earthquake-hit province of Sichuan, on Monday for publishing personal accounts of the earthquake on overseas Chinese-language Web sites, according to news reports and a Chinese press freedom advocate. Three days later, a well-known Internet publisher and human rights advocate, Huang Qi, went missing in Chengdu on Thursday after his Web site publicized Zeng’s arrest, according to news reports.