CHINA: Plot against former bosses of newspaper Nanfang Dushi Bao [RFA]
Ex-manager sentenced to 12 years in prison and police arrest editor-in-chief
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) condemned a plot against former bosses of the weekly newspaper Nanfang Dushi Bao as ex-managing director Yu Huafeng was sentenced to 12 years for "corruption", "embezzlement" and "appropriating State property".
Police have arrested Cheng Yizhong, the newspaper's editor in chief in connection with the same case.
"This is the latest stage of a plot set up by the authorities in Guangdong against this reforming and courageous daily which has in particular carried compromising news on the Sars virus and the death of a student in a police station," said the international press freedom organisation.
The plot aimed to keep Chinese journalists in a state of fear, it said. "While the Communist Party boasts of having included protection of private property in the Constitution, press bosses and journalists are sentenced to heavy jail terms for having turned their daily into an independent and going concern," said Reporters Without Borders. [more]
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