Houston Community News >> China Curbs Foreign News
9/11/2006 Beijing— International press groups denounced new Chinese curbs on the dissemination of foreign news as a step backwards ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when thousands of journalists will descend on the country's capital.
The official Xinhua news agency announced rules on Sunday requiring foreign media to seek its approval with immediate effect to distribute news, pictures and graphics within China.
Warning against news that endangers national security, sabotages national unification or promotes cults, the rules empower Xinhua to censor reports distributed in China by foreign media and to delete forbidden content.
"These new regulations on the distribution of foreign news are a step backward," Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement received on Tuesday. "It is greatly distressing that less than two years before the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the government is attempting to tighten its financial and political control over the flow of information in China."
The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders called for a joint reaction from the U.S., European and Japanese governments to a new attempt to curb the free flow of information. "It is outrageous that Xinhua, the Communist Party mouthpiece, should claim full powers over news agencies," the group said. "Xinhua is establishing itself as a predator of both free enterprise and freedom of information."
On Monday the European Union criticized the curbs as a "very negative development" and vowed to raise the issue in human rights talks with Beijing. British Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said in Beijing last week before the new rules were announced that she would raise the issue of press freedom with Chinese Olympic organizers.
Around 20,000 accredited media are due to descend on Beijing for the Olympics, and thousands more without access to the venues are expected to report from China during the games.
(Contributed by Reuters)