When foreign correspondents gathered in Beijing on Tuesday to discuss what to do about being followed, detained, interrogated and threatened over their reporting of the banned Falun Gong movement, the authorities knew exactly where they were meeting - plainclothes public security police openly tailed some of the reporters to the venue in a Thai restaurant.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCC) yesterday sent a letter of protest to the Chinese Foreign Ministry following their meeting asking that the campaign of harassment be halted and the right of correspondents to cover news events be fully guaranteed and protected.
The main concern of the Beijing-based foreign media is that some members will be expelled if they make further contact with Falun Gong, a spiritual movement which mixes mystical breathing exercises with elements of Buddhism and Taoism and which claims millions of followers.
"In the past several days, a number of our FCC members have been subjected to blatant harassment by police and security agents simply because they had covered activities of Falun Gong practitioners," said the letter, which was also sent to the State Council.
"Our members have been followed, detained, interrogated and threatened. Television reporters have had satellite transmissions interfered with and video shipments delayed. A number of members have had their press cards and residence permits indiscriminately confiscated, and some have been threatened with further, more serious action." The problems largely stem from a secret Falun Gong press conference held in Beijing on October 28th to which two journalists each from the Reuters and Associated Press news agencies and a New York Times reporter were invited. Held in the middle of the nationwide crackdown against the sect, which is vilified daily in the official Chinese media, the news conference severely embarrassed the security police, already under internal criticism for failing to head off a protest in April by more than 15,000 Falun Gong practitioners outside Beijing's Zhongnanhai leadership compound.
The reporters were interrogated by security police who confiscated their press cards and residence permits and required them to sign "confessions" of wrongdoing. The documents were returned to the three Americans in the group after US Embassy officials protested strongly about the "harassment" of the journalists. The others were returned later.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ms Zhang Qiyue, told a news conference that the journalists violated regulations concerning foreign reporters in China by attending the gathering. "You must be aware that Falun Gong is a cult organisation. Their secret press conference was illegal," she said.
This week several journalists have been summoned to the Foreign Ministry for further lectures about their actions. One correspondent was given the "most serious possible warning" not to continue meeting with members of Falun Gong, whose leader, Mr Li Hongzhi, lives in exile in New York.
Public security police often follow foreign correspondents in Beijing. Videos sent from abroad to television bureaus, including CNN, are held up for weeks at customs. Television satellite transmissions are blocked from time to time. Pages are sometimes removed from international magazines and newspapers sold only in hotels for foreigners.
Before now this activity related mainly to reporting of China's pro-democracy movement. However, the authorities have shown by their recent intensified actions against the foreign media that they regard the Falun Gong movement as a bigger threat to communist rule and are determined to deny it the oxygen of publicity in the foreign media. A number of correspondents are now followed wherever they go.
"We find this worrisome and unacceptable," the Foreign Correspondents' Club said. "In fact, we foreign journalists are merely doing normal reporting, as expected by our readers and as dictated by our professional ethics. Just as we would cover press conferences by the Chinese government spokesmen against Falun Gong, we are also duty-bound by our profession to cover the other side of the Falun Gong story. "Such harassment is completely out of line with international practice. It impedes our legitimate journalistic work and violates the private lives of our members and their families. It prevents us from reporting in a balanced and fair way. It also tarnishes China's image as a modernising nation that adheres to and respects internationally accepted norms of behaviour."
The Beijing government has labelled Falun Gong a cult and claims it caused the deaths of 1,400 practitioners, who refused conventional medicine for illnesses. It accuses the United States of double-standards for criticising its crackdown on the movement, which it compares with extreme cults in the west. More than 100 Falun Gong members have been arrested and hundreds more held under various forms of administrative detention.
Mr Li has denied that Falun Gong wants to overthrow the communist government.