Attempted homicide charges have reportedly been filed against men who attacked a German TV news crew while they were filming in Hebei. Police attempted to defend the team, but a local Party secretary’s car is said to have been among those chasing them. From a release by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, posted at The Guardian:
ARD correspondent Christine Adelhardt, accompanied by two German colleagues and two Chinese staff, had been filming in the village of Da Yan Ge Zhuang for a report on urbanisation, one of the incoming Chinese government’s major challenges and a process that has often provoked disputes over land ownership.
[…] When the crew left, two cars, later joined by at least two others, gave chase, trying to force the Germans’ minivan off the road and to deliberately cause a collision.
[…] The crew got away, but were pursued, forced off the road and onto the sidewalk, rammed, and made to stop. Two men from the pursuing vehicles attacked the minivan with baseball bats, shattering its windscreen, before the ARD driver was able to get away again by bulldozing his way past a car parked in front of the ARD van.
The crew then came across two motorcycle policemen and asked them for help. Their pursuers caught up with them, and again began smashing and punching holes in the car’s windscreen, despite the police officers’ attempts to control them.
Adelhardt and ARD were also involved in one of four incidents last summer which prompted a joint protest by three China-based Foreign Correspondents’ Clubs. February last year also saw two separate attacks on foreign journalists covering land grabs in the Zhejiang village of Panhe.
