Ursula Gauthier, a correspondent from the French news magazine L'Obs, will fly to Paris on December 31st after the Chinese government refused to renew her visa over a report on restive Xinjiang province, sparking fears her expulsion could signal new restrictions on media reporting in China.
According to Beijing, Ms Gauthier had “offended the Chinese people” with her article in the centre-left weekly news magazine, which accused Beijing of “ruthless repression” of the Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province.
Ms Gauthier has refused to apologise on numerous occasions, saying she has “never supported terrorism” and expressing anger at the way the Chinese government had “trashed” her name.
A follow-up commentary on the official Xinhua news agency said foreign media outlets should make “their due contribution to the global fight against terror” and China ushered in further media restrictions on terror-related reports in new anti-terror laws implemented this week.
The Global Times, which is part of the People's Daily, the official organ of the ruling Communist Party, ran the results of a poll of over 200,000 people which showed that some 95 per cent of respondents said 'yes' when asked "Do you support expelling the French journalist who supports terrorism?"
What makes the reaction to Ms Gauthier’s report particularly unsettling for foreign correspondents working in China is the way in which she was personally vilified in the media. Her report prompted a wave of outraged response in the Chinese media, and the comments sections were filled with personal attacks and sexual threats.
The story that prompted her expulsion criticised the way China linked the deadly attacks in Paris on November 13th to a Chinese government manhunt of Uighur militants following an assault on Sogan colliery in Aksu, in which 50 miners and police officers were reportedly stabbed to death. After the manhunt, some 28 Uighurs were reportedly killed at Baicheng.
“However, as bloody as it was, the attack Baicheng was nothing like the attacks of November 13th. It was actually a localised explosion of rage, such as occurs more frequently in this remote province whose inhabitants, Turkic-speaking Uighurs and Muslims, undergo ruthless repression.”
The Chinese government has long called on the international community to support China’s battle against Islamist extremists in Xinjiang.
Beijing wants its fight against the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a UN-listed terror group, to be acknowledged as an important part of the international fight against terrorism, but Western nations have not co-operated with China on intelligence-sharing or provided other resources, saying China has yielded little evidence to prove that the terror attacks are a co-ordinated campaign orchestrated by ETIM.
Uighurs complain that Beijing is trying to crush their culture, while the government says it brings prosperity to the oil and gas-rich province.
While expulsion summons images of a journalist being escorted onto a plane, in reality what happens is the government refuses to renew a reporter’s press credentials which are issued annually by the foreign ministry, and which are needed to secure a journalist visa.
The process can be lengthy, and in recent years, the threat of withholding visas, or delays in the process, have been used to signal official displeasure with reporting by a particular news agency.
The New York Times had difficulties in 2013 after reports on the wealth of the families of senior government officials.
Actual refusal is relatively rare. The last time a foreign journalist was expelled from China was Melissa Chan, an al-Jazeera English-language correspondent in 2012.
“They are very clearly trying to intimidate the foreign press in China because they don’t want anyone to say things which are different from the official version,” Ms Gauthier said.
Xinhua went on to accuse her of turning her expulsion into an attack on press freedom.
“However, it is worth noting that even press freedom has its limits and citing press freedom as defence for a deeply biased and potentially dangerous report is not at all convincing,” Xinhua said.
The anti-terror laws, passed by a meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, creates a new anti-terror agency and security forces with broad powers, and also bans disseminating information about terrorist activities, except on official media, and cracks down on “hearsay” and “rumour”.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said it was “appalled” by the decision to deny Ms Gauthier’s accreditation.
“Receiving criticism is a normal and necessary part of journalistic work, but this is neither proportionate nor reasonable. Insinuating that Ms Gauthier supports terrorism is a particularly egregious personal and professional affront with no basis in fact,” the FCCC said.
