China is facing accusations of attempting to muzzle and intimidate foreign press after it said it would expel a French journalist who refused to apologise for an article criticising government policy.
Lu Kang, a spokesperson for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, claimed Ursula Gauthier, the Beijing correspondent for French magazine L’Obs, had offended the Chinese people with a recent column about terrorism and the violence-hit region of Xinjiang. “Gauthier failed to apologise to the Chinese people for her wrong words and it is no longer suitable for her to work in China,” Lu said in a statement, according to Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency.
Gauthier’s press credentials and visa expire on 31 December, meaning she will effectively be forced to leave the country unless they are renewed before then. It would be the first time a foreign journalist has been expelled from China since 2012 when Melissa Chan, an al-Jazeera English correspondent known for her hard-hitting reports on human rights issues, was forced to leave.
Speaking on Saturday, Gauthier said she believed her expulsion was an attempt to silence criticism of Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang and to intimidate fellow journalists. “They are just telling [foreign journalists]: ‘Beware! Behave! If you don’t [toe the government’s line] you will have the same end as Ursula Gauthier.’ That is what they are saying.”
News of Gauthier’s imminent expulsion sparked outrage among colleagues and freedom of speech groups. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said it was appalled by Beijing’s move. “Unless the authorities reverse their decision, this will be the first expulsion of a foreign correspondent from China since 2012. It is one of the most flagrant attempts, among many, to use the accreditation and visa process to threaten journalists,” it said.
“The FCCC views this matter as a most serious development and a grave threat to the ability of foreign correspondents to work in China,” the statement added.
Writing on Twitter, Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, said the expulsion was “disgraceful and counterproductive”.
Gauthier’s combative article, which was published last month after the 13 November terrorist attacks in Paris, questioned the Communist party’s policies in Xinjiang, a troubled and resource-rich region in China’s far-west that is home to the largely Muslim Uighur minority.
Xinjiang suffers frequent outbreaks of violence including ethnic rioting and, more recently, what appear to be attacks on civilians by Islamic extremists. Draconian security measures mean independent reporting on many such incidents is virtually impossible.
In her article, Gauthier suggested Beijing’s “pitiless repression” of the Uighurs was helping to fuel what appeared to be a growing tide of deadly violence. She claimed Beijing had refused “to acknowledge its own responsibility for the rising exasperation of its minorities”.
The piece infuriated Chinese authorities, which responded with a series of inflammatory editorials in the state-run media that accused her of supporting terrorist acts. Gauthier was also subjected to a series of vicious online attacks, including death threats.
Officials summoned the journalist telling her that her press credentials would be renewed only if she retracted her report and made a public apology. Gauthier declined to do so. “I told them I would not change a word,” she told the New York Times last week.
In its statement on Saturday, the ministry of foreign affairs accused the French journalist of “pouring fuel on the fire of terrorism and the brutal killing of innocent civilians”. Gauthier dismissed those accusations as “plain nonsense”.
“If it were true, if I was really supporting terrorism, I should have been indicted because it is a crime. [But] they are not indicting me, they are expelling me and they expect people to believe that this is the real issue. It is not the real issue. The real issue is that they have their own narrative of what is happening in Xinjiang and they want everyone in China, including the foreign press, to use their narrative. They don’t want any other kind of explanation or interpretation.”
“Nobody is saying there is no terrorism in Xinjiang,” Gauthier added. “But they want us to say there is only terrorism in Xinjiang. This is the problem.”
The FCCC also attacked Chinese claims that Gauthier was guilty of “speaking for terrorism”. It said: “Insinuating that Gauthier supports terrorism is a particularly egregious personal and professional affront with no basis in fact.”
The FCCC called on Beijing to reverse its decision but the French correspondent said she was preparing to leave on the last flight to Paris on 31 December. “I am very angry,” she said. “In China, they have trashed my name.”
- Additional reporting by Christy Yao