Beijing Winter Olympics: RSF urges press to protect themselves against surveillance | RSF – Reporters sans frontires

From 4th to 20th February, 2022, China will host the 24th Olympic Winter Games and, although access to pre-Olympic events for foreign journalists has been very limited in the recent months due in particular to the Covid-19 pandemic, the sports and general press of the whole world will give the event very wide coverage.

On this occasion, RSF recommends journalists who travel to China to avoid downloading applications that could allow the Chinese authorities to monitor them. RSF also recommends that media outlets, publishers, and social networks denounce any editorial interference or pressure from the regime and continue their investigations into Beijing's attacks on press freedom (see the details of the recommendations below).

"The Olympic Games provide President Xi Jinping with a dream opportunity to restore his image and try to make people forget his catastrophic human rights records, including press freedom and the right to information, says RSF East Asia Bureau head, Cdric Alviani. It is legitimate for the media to cover this major international event, but they must be wary of the regimes manipulation attempts and protect their journalists from surveillance and possible pressure.

China, the world's largest prison for journalists with at least 127 detained, ranks 177th out of 180 in the 2021 RSF World Press Freedom Index, just two places above North Korea, a country in which journalism is synonymous with state propaganda. President Xi Jinping, in power since 2013, has restored a media culture worthy of the Maoist era, in which to freely access information is not a right, but a crime.

The sports world is particularly worried about the fate of international tennis champion Peng Shuai, a Chinese citizen who was apparently placed under house arrest after accusing a former deputy prime minister of rape on the 2nd November 2021 on the Chinese social network Sina Weibo, an event to which which the regime responded with an all-out censorship campaign.

RSFs recommendations:

1. Recommendations for journalists

2. Recommendations for media outlets, publishers, and social networks

These recommendations are extracted from a report entitled "The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China" that will be published by RSF in early December 2021. This publication will detail the system of censorship and information control put in place by the Beijing regime and the threat it poses for press freedom and democracy in the world.

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Beijing Winter Olympics: RSF urges press to protect themselves against surveillance | RSF - Reporters sans frontires

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