Freedom of expression

For the first time, the annual global celebration of world press freedom – on May 3 – will have as its focus the battles now raging to break down the great walls of censorship and ideology that stifle free speech and journalism in China. There is a lot at stake in the region and beyond. In Hong Kong, the media community hopes to end its status as an isolated outpost of democracy. In Africa, where China has become a major player in media development, and in Europe, journalists want to establish more independent links with their counterparts in Beijing.

In Taiwan journalists are looking for signs of a new tolerance and, not least, an end to a China-inspired ban by United Nations officials on journalists from Taipei covering the annual world health assembly of the world health organisation. Earlier this year, European parliament vice-president Edward McMillan-Scott asked the EU to urge the UN to revoke its ban on Taiwanese journalists covering the WHA, while last year, 31 Taiwanese media organisations protested to the UN and WHO. My organisation, which has 500,000 members in over 100 countries, recently issued a new call for the UN to lift its four-year ban on Taiwanese journalists from reporting from next month’s WHA, accusing the UN of undermining the role of journalism in global campaigns for public health.

Several other international press associations have also expressed their support by protesting the UN’s unfair treatment of Taiwan. The UN is allowing itself to be bullied by China and in the process is chipping away at the values it was created to protect. Taiwanese journalists should be given accreditation like hundreds of other media people who will be covering the WHA annual assembly, which will open in Geneva on 19 May. It is incomprehensible that bureaucratic obstacles should be used to deny journalists from Taiwan access to the forum that will consider the universal need for protection against risks of spreading disease. Access should be granted in line with article 19 of the UN’s own universal declaration of human rights that highlights the “freedom to … seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. International disputes over Chinese national sovereignty and territory should not limit the rights of journalists to gather information. They are not engaged in politics and should not suffer discrimination in this way. Freedom to gather news should not be sacrificed on the altar of political disputes whether or not China suppresses or attempts to suppress Taiwan.

On April 13, a delegation of journalist leaders from Africa, Europe and Asia flew to Beijing for crisis meetings with the Chinese government and media chiefs about the deteriorating conditions facing journalists. The mission came as controversy over Tibet, violent demonstrations on the streets of Europe, and talk of boycotts in Western capitals threatens to derail this year’s Olympic Games. The preparation of the Olympic Games had, until a few weeks ago, been a masterpiece of political choreography and public relations.

At the time Beijing was awarded the right to host the games, it made a solemn promise to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to stop repressing Chinese journalists and to open its doors to foreign media. It was always going to be a long-shot, because freedom of the press in China, where 29 journalists are in prison, is one game the government in Beijing plays on its own uncompromising terms.

The delegation of nine journalists from the International Federation of Journalists – which includes representatives from Germany, Denmark, Greece and Sweden – sought assurances from the Chinese Olympic committee and government officials that the original plans for an easing of media restrictions would go ahead. But it is uncertain how the Chinese will react. In the wake of growing anger over coverage of its internal protests in the foreign press, the atmosphere has changed. Foreign journalists based in China are being targeted and abused on Chinese websites in a wave of anti-foreigner hostility, says the foreign correspondents club in Beijing.

The problem is that journalists are in the front line of a political argument in which media are not innocent bystanders. China’s communist leaders are profoundly cynical about western media attachment to human rights. In a country where government is rumoured to have thousands of employees monitoring information entering and leaving the country, few people were surprised by a report recently released by Amnesty International which finds that China has fallen well short of its pledge to provide unrestricted internet access leading up to the Olympics. Instead, Beijing is tightening its grip on the flow of information. YouTube, BBC, CNN and Yahoo News websites and the fact-site Wikipedia have been regularly inaccessible and more government intervention is feared as the opening ceremony nears.

When May 3 comes this year I shall be celebrating in Hong Kong and talking to local journalists about the longer-term prospects for press freedom in China. It’s already evident that the Olympics will not deliver the dream of a new era of openness, but this is a long game and change is on the way.