RTÉ reporter in Beijing flees China with husband after threats

Irish journalist Yvonne Murray, who had been reporting for RTÉ from Beijing, has been forced to flee China's "hostile atmosphere" with her family amid concerns for the safety of her husband, veteran BBC correspondent John Sudworth.

The couple, who have three young children, have been based in China for the past nine years and took the decision to relocate to Taiwan last week.

Speaking to The Irish Times from Taiwan on Wednesday, Murray said they felt they had no option but to flee their Beijing home.

“For years, it has felt like we were lurching from crisis to crisis, never knowing what the Chinese authorities might do next to punish my husband for his reporting. It started with ridiculously short visas – often just one month, and not renewed until the 11th hour creating constant uncertainty.

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“When that didn’t work, it progressed to a full-scale personalised attacks and legal threats carried in Chinese state media and pumped out across Chinese and international social media,” she said.

Their three children speak fluent Chinese and two of them were born in China, Murray said, so they had been reluctant to leave.

“We could withstand it for a long time because there is so much to like about China. It’s a wonderfully vibrant and culturally-rich country, and most importantly the story, as a journalist, is so interesting and so important. But we reached a point where we could no longer justify raising a family in such a hostile atmosphere.”

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said the attacks on Sudworth “appeared to be in retaliation for his coverage of Xinjiang, the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues that Chinese foreign ministry officials repeatedly said had crossed ‘red lines’.”

In a statement, the BBC said: “John’s reporting has exposed truths the Chinese authorities did not want the world to know.”

Murray, who is originally from Howth, Co Dublin, said when they were leaving their home the family was followed by secret police right up to when they boarded the plane.

“When we were preparing to depart, we noticed plain clothes police outside our home, watching us and our children loading our suitcases into the taxi. We were then followed all the way to the airport by an unmarked car and again at the airport there were secret police taking photographs of us and watching us check in,” she said.

“It was extremely unsettling and a terrifying experience for our small children. But the saddest thing for me is for that to be their departing memory from the country they know and love as their home.”

Sudworth told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “We have faced threats of legal action as well as massive surveillance now, obstruction and intimidation whenever and wherever we try to film.

“In the end we, as a family based in Beijing, along with the BBC, decided it was just too risky to carry on — which is, of course, sadly precisely the point of that kind of intimidation — and we have relocated to Taiwan.”

The departure of Sudworth and Murray “is a loss for the journalism community in China and more broadly, for anyone committed to understanding the country,” the FCCC said.

While China has a long history of cracking down on the foreign press corps, moves against them have become “more stringent” in recent years, according to Alex Dukalskis, an associate professor at University College Dublin in the School of Politics and International Relations.

Over the past year the authorities have “either not renewed the visa or kicked out about 20 journalists”, he said, “and usually these are journalists who have reported on issues the Chinese government does not like”.

The state-run tabloid newspaper the Global Times accused Sudworth on Wednesday of presenting “fake news”, and said he “became infamous in China for his many biased stories distorting China’s Xinjiang policies and Covid-19 responses”.

The Chinese embassy in Dublin tweeted on Wednesday that Murray had not been forced to leave China, but added that some individuals and entities in Xinjiang were considering suing Sudworth for his “unobjective and biased” reporting.

Prof Dukalskis said there would be “very serious grounds” to question whether any journalist would get a fair trial in such a case, so “the threat of a law suit is a serious one if you are physically in China”.

In the face of mounting international criticism for human rights abuses in Xinjiang and elsewhere China’s diplomats were increasingly taking an “aggressive defence”, he said.

“This kind of rhetoric is becoming a more common approach… a more pugilistic response to criticisms of China.”