LOCATION: Village near Kashgar
TYPE OF INCIDENT: Barred from public space, Detained
TOPIC: Xinjiang Unrest
NATIONALITY/ORGANIZATION: Katri Makkonen, Finnish Broadcasting Company
DESCRIPTION: I was waiting at the village mosque for friday prayers to end. Our driver came to get me and said that the police wanted to question us. The police got into our car and we were taken to the police station with our Uighur translator. They questioned us and took our passports to be copied. The police told us that we should only try to visit mosques with them escorting us and that we should’ve asked permission to be in the town. They didn’t notice that I was a journalist so we were let go. The police got back into our car with us and asked to see the photos we had taken but we declined. We were only held at the station for 30 minutes.
“I think letting foreign journalists access to Urumqi and letting us report freely was a big improvement.”