Police prevented two Dutch correspondents from entering Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, on June 4, and later barred them from a collapsed middle school where parents had been congregating since the earthquake.
The reporters for Elsevier and Radio Netherlands were turned back at a police checkpoint leading into Dujiangyan. Police told the reporters they couldn’t enter the city because “the situation was very fierce.” Police then told the journalists’ driver if he persisted in trying to enter Dujiangyan they would record his license number and car details and it would “cause problems” for him.
The journalists proceeded to enter the city via a back road, but were unable to visit the grounds of the Juyuan middle school due to a police barricade. An official from the local Foreign Affairs Office approached the journalists and told them reports of foreign journalists being detained a day earlier were “just false rumors,” and said the authorities knew nothing of attempts by parents to petition at the courthouse.