China’s attempts to avoid public relations embarrassment ahead of the Olympics suffered a blow on Friday as police were filmed manhandling journalists, in spite of repeated government promises to allow free reporting on next month’s games.
Video from Hong Kong television stations showed Beijing police officers throwing one journalist to the ground. Police also apparently pulled cameramen from ladders as they tried to record chaotic scenes of people queueing to buy Olympic tickets.
Hong Kong’s journalists’ association accused the Beijing police of “wanton violation” of press freedoms. Beijing Olympic organising committee spokesman Sun Weide said: “We have been trying our best to help reporters to cover the Beijing Olympics”.
As part of its 2001 bid to host the Olympics, which open on August 8, Beijing promised international media would be given “complete freedom” to report on all aspects of China during the Games. But reporting on Olympic events in Tibet and elsewhere has already been circumscribed.
State media on Friday said that officials and the public should “befriend the media” as the Beijing Olympic organising committee opened a lavishly equipped media village for the more than 20,000 journalists and television personnel expected to cover the games.
However, friendliness was lacking in the area where tens of thousands of people formed sometimes disorderly queues to buy tickets for Olympic events on a humid and smoggy summer day.
Cable News, a Hong Kong TV network, denounced as “unacceptable” the treatment of a reporter pushed to the ground by police who were trying to force journalists to leave an area near rowdy crowds of would-be-ticket buyers.
A photojournalist from the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, was detained for six hours. The official Xinhua news agency said he was held for “breaking through a barricade set up to control a ticket-buying crowd and kicking a policeman in the groin”.
Video footage seemed to show police pulling cameramen from ladders. The South China Morning Post said it was an “unfortunate accident”, and added: “We would like to express our sympathy to the injured policeman.”
In recent months, Chinese police have sometimes sought to limit coverage of potentially sensitive events by keeping journalists to designated areas, often some distance from potential interviewees.
Additional reporting by Jamil Anderlini.
