{"id":41740,"date":"2014-08-22T15:47:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T15:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=41740 "},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:47:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T15:47:00","slug":"41740-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=41740","title":{"rendered":"Rights Activists, Journalists Slam China\\’s Televised Confessions"},"content":{"rendered":"
2014-08-21<\/div>
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This screen grab taken from state television CCTV footage broadcast on May 13, 2014 shows Xiang Nanfu, apologizing on state television after being detained in Beijing.<\/div>
 AFP PHOTO \/ CCTV<\/div>
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The release of a Chinese freelance journalist after he “confessed” to his crimes on state television has sparked calls for international sanctions against Beijing, as activists hit out at a growing trend for televised confessions of those who fall foul of the authorities.<\/div>
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Xiang Nanfu, who had previously written stories for the overseas-based Chinese-language news website Boxun, was released on Tuesday on “parole,” although no trial was ever held, nor formal sentence passed.<\/div>
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The Paris-based media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the practice had been used in a number of high-profile detentions of journalists and commentators recently and constituted a violation of the detainees’ right to a fair trial.<\/div>
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“Reporters Without Borders calls on the European Council to sanction state-owned CCTV13’s executives for violating his right to a fair trial by broadcasting his forced confession in order to incriminate him,” the group said in a statement following Xiang’s release.<\/div>
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Xiang was initially detained on May 3 and accused of receiving money from overseas organizations, as well as contributing stories on government land grabs and black-market transplant organ trafficking, which had allegedly damaged China’s reputation, RSF said.<\/div>
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His televised confession that he “smeared the party and the government” was shown by state broadcaster CCTV on May 13.<\/div>
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As they released Xiang, police issued a statement saying that he was being released on parole—which often carries behavioral conditions like not speaking to foreign media—because of poor health and a “relatively good attitude.”<\/div>
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Veteran journalist Gao Yu was subjected to a similar televised confession just five days before Xiang’s.<\/div>
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The tactic, aimed at discrediting journalists and opinion-makers, was also used with journalist Chen Yongzhou in November 2013 and with big-name tweeter and businessman Charles Xue two months earlier, RSF said.<\/div>
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‘Intolerable’<\/div>
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“We call on the European Council to adopt sanctions against CCTV13 and its executives…for broadcasting these forced confessions,” the group said in a statement on its website.<\/div>
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“This is intolerable on the part of a news organization, even one controlled by the state.”<\/div>
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It said the EU has previously taken sanctions against Iranian officials after finding that they had denied detainees the right to a fair trial in a similar manner.<\/div>
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Hsu Wei-ch’un, who heads the nongovernmental group Taiwan Democracy Watch, said China’s use of televised confessions is often linked to high-profile individuals.<\/div>
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 Continue reading the original article<\/a>.<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>"Reporters Without Borders calls on the European Council to sanction state-owned CCTV13's executives for violating his right to a fair trial by broadcasting his forced confession in order to incriminate him," the group said in a statement following Xiang's release.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}