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China news tagged with: Zhao Yan (61)

• Missing Chinese Journalist Resurfaces

  

  “A Chinese journalist who spent three years in prison, feared missing after he failed to show up to deliver a keynote address at a Hong Kong media conference, has resurfaced in Beijing and apologized for his disappearance.” From Radio Free Asia:

  “I am grateful to everyone for their concern. I will apologize to the conference organizers,” Beijing-based New York Times researcher and Chinese investigative reporter Zhao Yan said in a telephone interview from his home in Beijing.

  Chinese authorities didn’t try to interfere with his appearance in Hong Kong, he said.

  Zhao, who was initially accused of “revealing state secrets” and then jailed for fraud after The New York Times correctly predicted the retirement of then president Jiang Zemin, was released from prison in September 2007.

  

  Picture source is here.

  » Read more
  • May 4, 2008 11:01 AM

• Chinese Journalist Zhao Yan Calls for Press Freedom Following Release

  

  From RFA:

  A Beijing-based news researcher for The New York Times and cutting-edge Chinese investigative reporter has called for greater press freedom in China following his release from a three-year jail term.

  “There is not enough press freedom now,” Zhao Yan, who was jailed for fraud after charges of “revealing state secrets” were withdrawn, told RFA’s Mandarin service. “A law enshrining such freedoms should be enacted,” he told reporter Xin Yu shortly before leaving for the United States.

  Zhao was initially accused of “revealing state secrets” after The New York Times correctly predicted the retirement of then president Jiang Zemin. That charge was dropped but he was convicted of defrauding an official of U.S. $2,500, which he denies. He was released from prison in September 2007 but hasn’t spoken publicly until now. He was fired from a previous reporting job with the magazine China Reform for reporting on a grassroots campaign against a reservoir project in northern China.

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  • April 16, 2008 6:37 PM

• Headliners: Zhao Yan, Xiao Zejiang and David Lancashire – Kenneth Tan

  

  From the Shanghaiist:
  
  

  Zhao Yan (˵µÂ≤©), the Chinese journalist jailed in 2004 while working for the New York Times is expected to be freed this weekend. Zhao was charged for revealing state secrets after a Times report was published that correctly predicted the retirement of Jiang Zemin (ʱüÊ≥ΩÊ∞ë) as president and Communist Party chief…

  Father Paul Xiao Zejiang (ËÇñÊ≥Ωʱü) has been ordained coadjutor bishop of Guizhou diocese, the first ordination approved by both Beijing and the Vatican after the Pope published a letter to Chinese Catholics on June 30…

  David Lancashire, a Canadian hired by The Associated Press in 1956 to become the first North American reporter to defy a U.S. travel ban and report from mainland China after the 1949 revolution, has died at the age of 76 of a heart attack. [Full Text]

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  • September 14, 2007 10:41 PM

• China to Free Jailed New York Times Employee – Jim Yardley (Updated)

  

  Update: Zhao was released early Saturday morning.

  Journalist and former New York Times researcher Zhao Yan is slated to be released from prison this weekend, according to the New York Times:

  Prison officials in Beijing told Mr. Zhao’s older sister that he would be released before 9 a.m. on Saturday. The sister, Zhao Kun, said today that her brother, who suffered health problems during his incarceration, planned to undergo a physical examination in Beijing before leaving the city to attend a family wedding in northeastern China.

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  • September 14, 2007 11:27 AM

• Group: Journalists Jailed More in China – Alexa Olesen

  

  From AP:
  
  

  China, which jails more journalists than any other nation, is challenging the view that information on the Internet is impossible to control, and the implications for press freedom could be far-reaching, a New York-based rights group said.

  At least 31 journalists are behind bars in China, making it the world’s leading jailer of reporters for the eighth year in a row, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in its annual survey released Thursday.

  Three out of four of the journalists were convicted under vague charges of subversion or revealing state secrets, and more than half were Internet journalists. [Full Text]

  - Read the full CPJ report. Also, a comment on the report from Rebecca MacKinnon and CDT’s earlier post: “Chinese Court Rejects Appeal by Researcher for The Times.”

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  • December 8, 2006 8:26 PM

• China to Ease Restrictions on Foreign Journalists for ‘08 Summer Olympics – Jehangir Pocha

  

  From the Boston Globe:
  
  

  Press freedom got a new — but temporary — boost in China yesterday when the government announced that it would allow foreign journalists greater autonomy in advance of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

  Foreign journalists usually need permission from Chinese authorities before conducting interviews and traveling anywhere outside the city where they are based. While the rules are only loosely enforced, authorities have used them selectively to clamp down on journalists covering sensitive stories.

  …The government is not relaxing restrictions on Chinese journalists. Reflecting this double standard, a Chinese court yesterday upheld a three-year prison sentence for Zhao Yan, a researcher with The New York Times. Zhao was convicted of fraud after he reported on official corruption and peasant rights before he joined the Times.
  [Full Text]

  Read CDT’s eariler post: “Chinese Court Rejects Appeal by Researcher for The Times.”

  » Read more
  • December 3, 2006 1:52 PM

• Chinese Court Rejects Appeal by Researcher for The Times – Jim Yardley

  

  From The New York Times:
  

  A Beijing appeals court on Friday upheld a fraud conviction against a Chinese researcher for The New York Times in a ruling that means he will probably remain in prison until his three-year sentence ends next September.

  The researcher, Zhao Yan, sought to overturn an August fraud conviction that stemmed from a period in 2001 when he worked as a reporter for a Chinese magazine. He has maintained his innocence, and his legal team has complained that the appeals court prohibited them from mounting a vigorous case. [Full Text]

  » Read more
  • November 30, 2006 9:47 PM

• Chinese Court Denies Public Hearing for Times Researcher – Jim Yardley

  

  From The New York Times:

  The High Court of Beijing has rejected a request by a jailed Chinese researcher for The New York Times to hold an open hearing on his appeal of his fraud conviction, a defense lawyer said today.

  Instead, Guan Anping, the defense lawyer, said that prosecutors and the defense team would be limited to arguing the case through written filings, and that the High Court could rule on the appeal within two weeks.

  Mr. Guan said court officials told him Thursday that he would be allowed to present written testimony from new witnesses or other new evidence.

  The researcher, Zhao Yan, has maintained his innocence, and has repeatedly asked his defense team to petition the court for an open hearing, saying it is necessity for a fair review of the case. In the initial trial, Mr. Zhao’s lawyers were forbidden to question prosecution witnesses, and the lawyers had hoped for more leeway in the appeal.[Full Text]

  » Read more
  • November 3, 2006 11:34 AM

• Appeal by Chinese Researcher for Times May Soon Be Heard – Jim Yardley

  

  Latest on Zhao Yan case, from the New York Times:

  A Chinese researcher for The New York Times may appear in court as early as next week to appeal his conviction on a fraud charge, but his legal team is worried that it will be unable to call witnesses, submit evidence or provide him with adequate representation.

  But the Beijing No. 2 People’s Intermediate Court convicted Mr. Zhao of a lesser, unrelated charge, accusing him of fraud at a time that predated his work at The Times, and sentenced him to three years in prison. He has already spent more than two years in detention and his release is currently scheduled for September 2007.

  Mr. Zhao, who had maintained his innocence on both charges, appealed the fraud conviction on Sept. 4. He also reconfigured his legal team, keeping Mr. Guan but replacing his lead lawyer, Mo Shaoping, with a prominent defense lawyer, Zhang Sizhi. [Full Text]

  - See CDT’s earlier posts on the case

  » Read more
  • October 5, 2006 11:39 PM

• Foreign scholars protest China policies – Peter Enav

  

  From Associated Press, via The Boston Globe:

  More than 50 leading scholars and rights campaigners from the United States, Europe, and Australia have issued a rare public protest of Chinese policies, sending an open letter to President Hu Jintao asking him to stop the harassment of human rights activists.

  The Sept. 29 open letter posted on the Web site of the New York-based Human Rights Watch organization chiefly bore the signatures of some 40 well-known China scholars, including the Council on Foreign Relations’ Jerome Cohen, Harvard’s Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Yahuda of the London School of Economics.

  “We note with concern the sharp increase in official retaliation against such advocates and their families through persistent harassment, banishment, detention, arrest and imprisonment,” the letter said. “We … write to urge your commitment to ensuring the civil rights of advocates for social justice.” [Full Text]

  See also “Experts Press Chinese Leader to Halt Attacks on Dissenters” from the New York Times.

  » Read more
  • October 3, 2006 9:38 AM

• Silent Games – Melinda Liu

  

  On Newsweek.com, Melinda Liu summarizes the recent government crackdown on free expression in China:

  For a while many foreign correspondents thought authorities were “killing the chicken to scare the monkey.” That’s a Chinese proverb meaning one target is attacked in order to intimidate another. When we saw our Chinese contacts harassed, detained, physically assaulted and sentenced to prison over the past year, it was tempting to assume they’d been “soft targets” for a regime intent on warning us, the international media, to stop sticking our noses into sensitive topics.

  But we were being naive. Beijing’s goals are far more sweeping than the chicken-and-monkey metaphor could encompass. Today’s targets are not just domestic media and foreign correspondents, not just our Chinese sources and local assistants. Less than two years before Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics, authorities are in the midst of a concerted”and disturbing”effort to slam stricter controls on what Chinese know and how they know it. [Full text]

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  • September 19, 2006 8:55 PM

• Researcher for Times in China Will Appeal Fraud Conviction – Jim Yardley

  

  From the New York Times:

  A Chinese researcher for The New York Times, sentenced to three years in prison for fraud, decided Monday to appeal his conviction, one of his lawyers said.

  Zhao Yan, 44, who worked in The Times’s Beijing bureau, won a victory on Aug. 25 when a Beijing court dismissed the more serious charge against him of leaking state secrets to the newspaper. But the court convicted him of a lesser, unrelated fraud charge that dated to 2001, when he worked as a journalist for a Chinese publication.

  Mr. Zhao, who has been in detention for nearly two years, has repeatedly denied both charges. On Monday, Guan Anping, a defense lawyer, described the fraud conviction as “absurd” and said the court’s refusal to allow defense witnesses to testify on Mr. Zhao’s behalf was “definitely a major procedural problem.” [Full Text]

  See a brief history of Zhao Yan case

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  • September 4, 2006 9:31 PM

• Trying times for journalists in China – Kent Ewing

  

  From Asia Times:

  With the Chinese government promising foreign journalists unprecedented freedom in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games, the trials of Zhao Yan and Ching Cheong serve as a reminder of the reality on the ground.

  Zhao, a researcher for The New York Times, was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday. Ching, chief China correspondent for Singapore’s The Straits Times, was tried for espionage nearly two weeks ago and is awaiting a verdict. [Full text]

  » Read more
  • August 28, 2006 8:58 AM

• Appeal Likely for Journalist at The Times – Jim Yardley

  

  From the New York Times:

  Lawyers for a Chinese researcher for The New York Times said on Friday that they would probably appeal his conviction on a fraud charge but also expressed satisfaction that a Beijing court dismissed a more serious charge of leaking state secrets.

  The researcher, Zhao Yan, 44, was found not guilty on Friday of leaking state secrets to The Times after spending nearly two years in prison in a case that attracted international attention and raised questions about the fairness of China’s legal system. [Full text]

  » Read more
  • August 26, 2006 7:05 PM

• Video: China dismisses fraud charges – Deborah Lutterbeck

  

  From Reuters:

  A Chinese court dismissed charges against a New York Times researcher

  Zhao Yan, 44, had been accused of telling the U.S. newspaper details of rivalry between Chinese President Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, over military appointments in 2004. [Click to see]

  See also China Gives Times Researcher 3 Years by Jim Yardley and Joseph Kahn.
  

  Technorati Tags: China, Zhao Yan

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  • August 26, 2006 4:48 AM

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