August 2015
Tianjin
European news outlet
We had a bunch of interference in Tianjin. I was held up by police on the side of the road for about an hour along with a video journalist colleague, who is a Chinese national, when we were covering a protest by families of dead firefighters. They kept us from covering the protest.
Also want to add that plainclothes and uniformed police literally locked us in the room where press conferences were held at the hotel in Tianjin at least twice – we have photos of the padlocks – to prevent us from speaking to firefighters’ families, who had charged into the hotel demanding to speak with journalists. They even locked up the fire exit, which is pretty ironic considering we were there covering government screw-ups that led to a massive fire! I asked to leave to use the bathroom and they refused.