China journalist faces charges for corruption report

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese journalist Yang Xiaoqing had
told his wife he knew how to handle the risks of his job, but
that was before he was arrested after reporting claims of
corruption, joining the country’s list of detained reporters.

Yang was arrested in January after five months’ hiding from
police, charged with extortion after reporting claims of
dishonest state property sales in his home county in southern
China’s Hunan province, his wife Gong Jie told Reuters.

But Yang, his family and other reporters insisted he was
innocent and said officials persecuted him for exposing their
misdeeds.

In China, outright censorship is just one of the pitfalls
journalists face, and officials can also use their control of
the courts to restrict the news, they said.

“The key problem in Yang’s case is that the legal system
isn’t independent. Leaders can use criminal charges to trap
journalists, and that makes challenging them, even local
leaders, dangerous,” Li Xinde, an on-line investigative
journalist who has protested Yang’s arrest, told Reuters on
Monday.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based
group, said China was the world’s leading jailer of journalists
in 2005 for the seventh consecutive year with 32 behind bars.

Yang, 36, is in some ways just the kind of reporter China’s
authorities seek to nurture. A Communist Party member who had
hopes of becoming an official, he studied Marxism at the Hunan
province Party School where cadres are trained, and worked for
the China Industry and Economic News, a broadsheet run by the
Communist Party’s youth wing, his wife said.

But Yang riled officials in Hunan, especially his home
county of Longhui, where disgruntled teachers and workers took
him their complaints, she said.

“He liked to do investigative reporting that spoke up for
ordinary people, but that left bad blood with local officials
going back a long time,” she said.

EXPOSES

In 2005, Yang reported Longhui officials sold off a
struggling state-owned food plant and paper mill to business
associates for much more than the book value they reported.

Accusations of bureaucratic abuses have been common in
China as officials push through breakneck privatisation
policies. But in Hunan, Yang’s highly specific charges struck a
nerve.

County officials said Yang concocted the reports, using
them to extort hush money of 800,000 yuan ($100,000). The
officials issued orders for his arrest.

Li Fengfa, a journalist who worked with Yang on one report
about the sales, told Reuters he stood by Yang’s claims.

In China, it is not unknown for reporters to demand
payments to either publish or bury stories.

But Yang’s lawyers said procedures were tilted against him,
making it difficult to challenge apparent holes in the
accusations, which could lead to prison for four years or more.

Yang was charged by prosecutors controlled by the very same
Longhui County officials who first accused him, and might be
tried in the county court, they said.

“In China, a county secretary holds a lot of power —
financial, ideological, personnel — and that makes it
difficult to ensure a fair hearing of any charges,” said Du
Zhaoyong, a Beijing lawyer representing Yang.

County officials and police contacted by Reuters declined
to discuss the case or said they knew nothing. A provincial
police officer investigating the accusations, Huang Mulin, said
it was too early to say if or when Yang would be tried.

“He’s promised to give up reporting when he gets out,” said
Gong, who has not been allowed to see her husband in detention.

($1 = 8.015 Yuan)