‘Dumb tourist’ tactic used to cover China crisis

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 10

‘Dumb tourist’ tactic used to cover China crisis

By

TERRIL JONES

of AP Peking Foreign journalists are employing imaginative tactics to overcome growing obstacles in covering China under martial law. Reporting on China’s political crisis has become increasingly difficult as soldiers and the police strictly enforce restrictions on the press. Newsgathering is basically banned under martial law, except for the infrequent Governmentorchestrated peasant rally, or news conference. But virtually all reporters in the capital and other Chinese cities have ignored the regulations, coming up with their own ways of getting round martial law. “The most effective

trick these days is to act like a dumb tourist,” said an Asian photojournalist. “Wear bright clothes and shorts, and don’t hide your camera.” If stopped by security personnel, he said, “the best defence is to go on the offence. Ask them questions. It’s better than trying to run away”.

Martial law was imposed on May 20 in eight districts, which include and surround metropolitan Peking, in a move to quell the student-led democracy movement that was finally crushed in the bloody June 3-4 crackdown by the Chinese Army. Under the vaguely worded decree, foreigners are prohibited from entering schools, factories or

“organisations” and from photographing or videotaping at such locations.

Television networks face the greatest difficulties as their equipment makes them easy to spot.

“For television, we don’t have a story unless we have a picture that can convey the information,” said an official of the American television network CBS.

“We get chased away all the time. We’re very frustrated at not being able to shoot pictures.” Coverage has been reduced to relying on Gov-ernment-controlled television news.

“A great deal of what we’re doing is recording their material and reworking it,” said the CBS official, who asked

not to be named. “We’re very much at their mercy.” Foreign television networks can no longer send footage through State-run China Central Television to North America or Europe via satellites over the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Now they must somehow get their videotapes to Hong Kong or Tokyo. “We smuggled out our tapes, did the double shuffle with the cassettes and that sort,” said Vernon Mann, a correspondent for Britain’s Independent Television Network, who deliberately gave the police the wrong videotape when they tried to “confiscate” his film of a university campus in Chengdu, central China.