No rethinking of press censorship in China – Ongoing repression of journalists and bloggers

The fact that Zhang Miao, employee of the German magazine "Die Zeit", was released does not mean that China is about to ease its press censorship. This was stated by the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) shortly after she was released from prison. The human rights organization also recalled numerous repressive measures against journalists, local and foreign alike. "In China, there are new intimidations, arrests and unfair trials against Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur journalists and bloggers almost every week. We welcome the long overdue release of Zhang Miao, but China is far from changing its press censorship policy. Due to new security laws and stronger measures of Internet censorship, there is less and less room for critical reports," said the STP's China-expert, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Friday.
Last night, Zhang Miao – who was arrested on October 2, 2014 – had been released without an indictment after she had been detained for nine months. "It was probably not only because of the protests from Germany that she got off without a longer imprisonment," said Delius. "The fact that she was arrested and kept detained for so long is enough to intimidate local and foreign journalists – a measure to limit the number of critical reports concerning the crackdown on the democracy movement in Hong Kong."

Meanwhile, there are further ongoing measures against journalists and bloggers. Thus, Shohret Hoshur, an Uyghur journalist living in the US, is under enormous pressure: His three brothers who still live in China were arrested in order to keep him from distributing critical reports via "Radio Free Asia". His brother Tudaxun was already sentenced to five years in prison, and on May 8, 2015, trials were opened against his brothers Shawket and Rehim – who are not interested in politics –for allegedly "leaking state secrets".

On April 17, 2015, the blogger Jo Jayang was arrested in Tibet. The 27-year-old had published numerous blogs in which he criticized the recent wave of arrests in Tibet. Further, the Tibetan blogger Shokyang was detained on March 19, 2015, because he had spread critical texts via the Internet. The 25 year-old blogger Tsering Dondrub was arrested on June 20, 2015, for distributing material about the 80th birthday of the Dalai Lama in social media networks.

Citizen journalist Yang Dongying was arrested In Zhejiang province on June 24, 2015, and Lian Hunali – a journalist who had been working for the independent news portal "64 Tianwang" – had been arrested and sentenced to one year in prison at the end of March 2015. Further, the Tianwang-journalists Zhang Jixin, Wang Jing and Huang Qi were arrested.
In China, citizen journalism emerged mainly because of the increasing self-censorship by journalists who fear state persecution.

On June 4, 2015, the journalist Wu Youming was sentenced in a secret trial. Currently, there are at least 28 journalists and 73 bloggers (most of them Uyghurs) detained in the People's Republic for political reasons. In the press freedom index of the organization "Reporters without Borders", China is only on rank 176 (of 180).