STAFF REPORTER | Pacific Media Watch
AUCKLAND – The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the discrimination practised by the Chinese delegation against local and international media at the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) held last weekend in Papua New Guinea and attended by President Xi Jinping.
During the APEC leaders’ summit, held from 17-18 November in Port Moresby, several accredited media – including the Australian public broadcasting TV channel ABC and the local EMTV News channel and The National daily newspaper – were prevented from covering three events organised by the Chinese delegation and involving Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The events included a dinner with President Xi’s counterparts from eight Pacific Island States. Chinese journalists were apparently the only ones allowed to cover these events.
“The delegation, which did not see fit to explain the reasons for this discrimination, cynically invited excluded journalists to use the recordings broadcast by the Chinese media as the source of information for their articles,” RSF said.
Cédric Alviani, director of RSF’s East Asia office, said: “It is intolerable that a foreign delegation in an international event would claim the right to choose which journalists can be admitted or not to cover the proceedings.”
He added that this incident was “a new example of the media control strategy established by Beijing, which is no longer limited to the Chinese territory and tends to spread internationally”.
China is one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, holding more than 60 professional and non-professional journalists behind bars.
In the 2018 World Press Freedom Index published by RSF, the country stagnates at 176 out of 180. In the RSF Index, President Xi is described as a “predator” against press freedom.
In Auckland, the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project also condemned the “assault on Papua New Guinea’s freedoms of speech, expression and access to information” in a country that has a constitutionally guaranteed free media.
Did Xi give O'Neill the idea to shut up Scott Waide?
Posted by: Barbara Short | 25 November 2018 at 09:20 AM
As the Washington Post put it, APEC was "a week during which China’s official delegation staged a series of aggressive, bullying, paranoid and weird stunts to try to exert dominance and pressure the host nation and everyone else into succumbing to its demands."
China, when they saw APEC was to be held in PNG, obviously saw it as their opportunity to try to manipulate the meeting in their favour of Free trade.. to bolster their BRI.
At the moment we know China is suffering from Trump's retaliationary tariffs. I can imagine Xi wanting to try to get back at Trump at this APEC meeting. If he couldn't have his way he wanted the meeting to look like a failure. All his party clapped when it was announced that there was no agreement. In his small mind "he won".
All along we could see that the PNG people really didn't have a clue about APEC. "What was it?" they asked. People were being told that "it will be good for PNG" and "the world will come and see us and want to help us" etc.
When really APEC is just a meeting of Asian/Pacific leaders to discuss world trade rules.
All Xi could think about was promoting his Free Trade for his BRI. The concept that developing countries like PNG need to be allowed to protect their infant industries didn't seem important.
It was great when, just before APEC, the PNG Customs burnt a lot of Chinese made bilums. You can see the photo on their Facebook page.
But the way Xi treated PNG journalists was so rude. Any decent Prime Minister would have spoken out and insisted that his own country's journalists be allowed to report on all events.
Yes, Xi is a predator against press freedom and needs to apologise to the PNG journalists who he shut out of certain events in Port Moresby.
Posted by: Barbara Short | 23 November 2018 at 08:00 AM