Avoiding The Chinese Authorities
Updated: 1:55am UK, Tuesday 02 September 2014
By Mark Stone, Asia Correspondent in Xinjiang Province, China
Reporting anything sensitive in China requires planning, a bit of stealth and some luck thrown in too.
China's far western province of Xinjiang is one of those areas (like Tibet and Tiananmen Square) where the country's Communist government is particularly sensitive.
Foreign journalists are not banned from visiting Xinjiang, it's just that we can't report freely when we get there.
The Chinese government is obsessed with controlling the message. Its state-run media is the perfect tool, loyally conveying the government-endorsed line.
And so the idea of foreign journalists wandering around in a region which China considers to be the frontline in its "war on terror" is not something they are willing to allow.
They do not want scrutiny of the tactics they deploy to deal with those they believe to be Islamist extremists.
The team at Sky's bureau in Beijing had tried for months to get permission for a fully sanctioned trip to the region.
The Chinese government has pumped huge investment into the resource-rich province. They claim to have transformed the lives of millions - both indigenous Uighur Muslims and the Han Chinese who have moved here over the past few decades.
We wanted to see that investment: the new high-speed rail line, the new hospitals, schools, universities.
We also wanted to examine the suggestions that the Chinese government is eroding the culture and religion of the Uighurs, perhaps fuelling unrest.
Our trip was initially given a tentative green light. But then, a week before we were due to travel, they U-turned: the trip was off.
No explanation was given. We decided to come anyway.
Colleagues of mine from other media organisations have been here recently. Most have been detained and some have had their images and video deleted.
So it's necessary to stay one step ahead of the authorities. Flights are booked at the last minute, different hotels night to night, check in late, check out early. We use small tourist-style cameras.
I'll admit, it's easy to get overly paranoid. Do the authorities really care that much about what we're doing? It turns out they do.
In Kashgar we tried to check into one hotel but were turned away. The staff noticed our journalist visas in our passports.
"You can't stay here," the receptionist said. "You must stay in the hotel down the road: it's the hotel for journalists."
After a few days of moving every day, complacency set in: we stayed two nights in the same place. It was a mistake.
On the second day, we had a call. "This is reception. The Kashgar police are downstairs to see you. Please come down."
We had a chat with two men. What were we reporting on? Did we have permission?
We showed them the paperwork for our original pitch for the rejected trip. It seemed to work.
The police took photos of us and then left, but not before admitting that they'd been trying to track us down for three days.
A constant worry is the prospect of having our footage deleted or destroyed. In 2012, a German TV crew was on an assignment in another part of China.
They left their hotel room for dinner. When they returned, the reporter's tablet computer and smartphone had been dunked in water. They were still wet and their contents destroyed.
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