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Screws to tighten on `terror’ reports

In a November 18 essay, Gauthier said China’s post-Paris expression of solidarity had “ulterior motives”, namely a desire to secure support for its anti-terror plans at home.

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“One of the big concerns I have with this draft counter-terrorism bill is that the definition of terrorism is quite vague and open-ended and if we look at how Chinese officials and the media have used the terrorism tag in the past, it’s chiefly applied to the Uyghurs as well as the Tibetans”, Leibold said.


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On December 31, Gauthier will become the first foreign journalist forced to leave China since 2012, when al Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan, an American, was expelled without formal explanation from Beijing. “I said I never supported terrorism, how do you want me to apologise for something I have not written”.


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“China has always protected the legal rights of foreign media and foreign correspondents to report within the country, but China does not tolerate the freedom to embolden terrorism”, he said.

“China’s retaliation against Ms. Gauthier for doing her job is a deeply unfortunate development and another sign that China is unwilling to brook criticism of its actions”, Griffen said.

“All this is rhetoric”, she said.

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.

In this regard, on Friday, the French foreign ministry issued a terse statement in which it regretted that Gauthier’s visa was not renewed. “France recalls the importance of the role journalists play throughout the world”.

China said Saturday that it would not renew a French journalist’s press credentials, the Associated Press reports.

China’s top leaders maintain the country is engaged in a domestic war on terror, including groups linked to a minority Muslim community, known as Uighurs, in the country’s far northwest.

Rights groups, though, doubt the existence of a cohesive militant group in Xinjiang and say the unrest mostly stems from anger among the region’s Muslim Uighur people over restrictions on their religion and culture.

BEIJING-China’s legislature has approved a wide-ranging anti-terrorism law that could force foreign tech firms to hand over sensitive information and paves the way for the military to engage in counterterror operations overseas. Amid a counterterrorism campaign, a Xinjiang court a year ago sentenced a Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) scholar critical of China’s ethnic policies in Xinjiang to life in prison.

This month, a Beijing court convicted a prominent lawyer of fanning ethnic hatred based on his comments that Beijing should rethink its Xinjiang policies. Journalists for China’s own entirely state-controlled media work under much tighter restrictions.

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Zhu Yongbiao, assistant director of the Institute of Central Asia Studies at Lanzhou University, told the Global Times on Sunday that the poll results, which show a 95 percent support for the foreign ministry, is a sign that the French reporter’s article has crossed a moral baseline.

Image China's new law gives authorities greater powers of surveillance over communications including private internet use