A Chinese journalist has been beaten to death while investigating the country’s notoriously dangerous coal mining industry, his newspaper has said.
Lan Chengzhang was set upon by a “group of mining thugs” near a mine in Huiyuan county, Shanxi province, the Beijing-based China Trade News said.
More than 5,000 deaths are reported every year, many of them in illegal or unregulated mines. [Full Text]
– Also note some other pieces of information regarding this reporter’s death have been posted at xici.net’s Reporters Home section: China Trade News insists on defending its part-time new hire Lan’s rights, despite local officials’ argument that he was not a “real journalist,” as he didn’t yet have a reporter’s ID. Datong (§ßÂêå)’s government information office dismissed the incident as simply a criminal case under investigation and that the beating to death of a reporter had in fact not happened. Also, a self-pronounced insider, with an Internet name “QingYangAngela,” said Lan was not a reporter and that he went there not to report but to blackmail mine bosses, with whom a negotiation didn’t work out, leading to the violence. Xici’s post is here (Chinese)