October 11th 2014
Anhui, Zongyang County, Anqing
A correspondent working for a British newspaper was reporting on funeral reform in rural Anhui province, and approached a village party secretary for comment. The party secretary reported the driver’s license plate number to his superiors. As the report went up through the municipal chain of command, various authorities harassed the driver’s wife and the party secretary of his ancestral village. Municipal police then forced the driver to bring the correspondent to the police station — even though the reporter had registered at a hotel the night before — threatening unspecified consequences if he refused to comply. At the police station, they took down the reporter’s information and let him go — yet called the fixer afterwards, suggested that they were tracking all movements, and warned of unspecified consequences if the reporter continued reporting. At 6:30 the following morning, the manager of the hotel where the journalist stayed overnight woke him up and, under pressure from police, forced him to leave. Once he got back to Beijing, a source in a separate village said that local officials harassed him and forced him to surrender the contact information of the journalist.