Chinese journalist arrested for leaking state secrets
Police in China arrested a 71-year old journalist in April for leaking state secrets abroad, a move that sparked controversy across the world.
Gao Yu, known for her opposition to the Communist Party, was arrested for giving a copy of Document No. 9 to Mirror Media Group, a U.S.-based Chinese news company that published the text of the document in its magazine, Mirror Monthly. The file contained Communist Party plans for an attack on more liberal ideology, according to The Guardian.
But when Mirror Monthly put out the story, the document had already been widely available, and the chief executive of Mirror Media Group, Ho Pin, said Yu did not send it to them as reported by The New York Times.
Yu, who had been arrested twice before during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and for leaking state secrets in 1993, was sentenced to seven years in prison, according to CNN.
“[Yu’s] arrest fits a pattern,”said Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who leads Press Uncuffed, an organization working to free imprisoned journalists. “The Chinese have no tolerance for people who want to talk about certain political issues.”
Chinese authorities arrested 32 journalists in 2013, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and China has made the news for civil rights protesting since.
The trend in China is becoming worse and worse for journalists, according to Priest.
“They have no remorse for the number of journalists they have put in prison,” Priest said.
Meghan Moriarty, a sophomore broadcast journalism major at the University of Maryland, said she worries about the future of her career field because of such instances.
“Overseas countries have some serious ethical issues,” Moriarty said. “If someone obtains information legally and the public has a right to know, they should not be prosecuted for it.”
Priest said that joining groups like Press Uncuffed and Reporters Without Borders is a good way to put pressure on the U.S. government to change the way other countries deal with these problems.
“Right now, there is no cost for China to jail journalists,” Priest said. “Other countries need to change that.”
On the other hand, Senaya Savir, a sophomore multi-platform journalism major, said privacy is a value that journalists should do a better job of respecting.
“As journalists, I strongly believe that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed,” Savir said. “In this field, privacy is a value we respect.”
Photo by Victor, via Creative Commons.
