By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, January 2: The French reporter of L’Obs news magazine, who was forced out of China after her report criticized and questioned the government policy in the Xinjiang region on Friday warned of ‘dark days ahead for journalist working in China’.
Ursula Gauthier is the first reporter to be repatriated in more than three years since Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera in 2012. The authorities refused to renew her credentials. Foreign correspondents’ visas in China are tied to their official credentials.
Moreover, China’s foreign ministry today said that she would no longer work in China because she did not make a public apology for an article she wrote on November 18.
“The future looked bleak for journalists in China. What happened with this small article about Xinjiang could happen with anything else,” she told AFPbefore leaving Beijing.
“This could be really dangerous in the future,” expressing her fear for the media under a draconian censorship and press rules of Beijing.
“I was incensed by the government’s moves to block critical coverage in places such as Xinjiang and Tibet,” The Guardian quoted her.
She views such treatment as means to intimidate foreign correspondents in China, particularly on issues concerning minorities, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Apart from rare and highly controlled foreign delegation visits, Tibet has been largely off-limits to foreign reporters since an outbreak of a Pan Tibet uprising in the run up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
“France and Europe should be concerned about what is going on here, not because it is a journalist, not only because of the freedom of press, but also because it is about China and what China is doing to its minorities, and even its majority, the problem is the same,” she added.
The reporter who had spent six years in China said that she will continue to write on China despite the death threats she have been receiving from angry readers.
The foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that ‘it entirely depends on her’ if she wishes to return to China.
The France-based organization, Reporters Without Borders, criticized the decision to expel the French reporter. China ranked 176th out of 180 countries in the organization’s 2015 Press Freedom Index.
“This is an unacceptable attack on freedom of information and creates a real obstacle for journalism in China,” Matthieu Croissandeau, Director of L’Obs told AFP.
