To the Secretariat, China Newspaper Association, for the attention of Mr Qui Hui/Ms Amy Wen
Sirs, Madam,
I acknowledge receipt of your fax letter dated 2 March 2007 with regard to the award of the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom to Shi Tao, an imprisoned Chinese journalist.
The decision to select Shi Tao as the Golden Pen laureate was made by the representatives of all WAN member nations, through our Board. It was a unanimous decision, taken in full knowledge of the details of the case.
As far as I can understand from your letter, you do not disagree with the facts, i.e. that he was indeed imprisoned for 10 years under the accusation of ’leaking state secrets’.
The Chinese constitution may well, as you note, guarantee the ’people’s freedom of speech as well as press freedom’. Unfortunately, this guarantee is a mere fiction and such freedoms simply don’t exist in China, as I’m sure you are perfectly aware. Indeed, if they did, Shi Tao would not be in prison today and nor would dozens of other journalists.
We are not at all impressed by the fact that this and other cases were dealt with ’according to the law’ and by courts. If the law does indeed make it possible to send a journalist to jail in such a case, the law should be abolished without delay, since it would be in contradiction with every conceivable international standard and convention on freedom of information and human rights.
In truth, however, it is completely absurd to characterize Shi Tao’s actions as leaking state secrets. He distributed information about censorship orders given out to the media by the Propaganda Department. The orders instructed them how to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen events. Are such orders perhaps the freedom of the press that your constitution allegedly protects? No, of course not, which is why Shi Tao took the courageous decision, which any professional reporter in a democracy would also do, to disseminate this information.
I must add, frankly, that we are greatly disappointed that your organization, which is supposed to represent newspapers and to protect their interests, finds that sending a reporter to jail for 10 years is "an appropriate sentence".
We would be pleased to continue the dialogue between our two organizations and still hope that one day your association will begin to defend and promote the free press values cherished by newspapers and journalists world-wide.
I am taking this opportunity also to send you attached our files on eight of the other journalists currently in prison in China. We would be most interested to hear your views on their cases also, as agreed at our last meeting.
I look forward to hearing from you further.
Yours sincerely,
Timothy Balding
Chief Executive Officer
World Association of Newspapers
To the World Association of Newspapers
March 2, 2007
To whom it may concern,
From the press release of your organization dated on November 28, 2006, we’ve learned that WAN decided to award the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom to Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist of the Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News), who was convicted of leaking state secrets, and to present this award at the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Cape Town on 4 June 2007. We consider it a wrong decision and hereby express our dissatisfaction.
In the WAN’s press release, it’s claimed that Shi Tao "is serving a 10-year sentence on charges of leaking state secrets for writing an e-mail about media restrictions in 2004". WAN thus decided to award him the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom to "recognize his outstanding defense and promotion of press freedom".
However, the truth was found out through our Chinese court trial: Shi Tao had leaked state secrets, harmed national interests of People’s Republic of China, and violated related laws of P.R. China. The Chinese court handled the case according to the law and made the appropriate sentence.
In China, our constitution guarantees the people’s freedom of speech as well as press freedom. But those who break the law must be brought to justice. It’s the same for any sovereign country in the world.
Over recent years, the People’s Daily and China Newspaper Association have been conducting communications and exchanges with WAN, sending Chinese newspaper delegations to attend annual meetings of WAN. The mutual understanding between each other has thus been enhanced.
For further communications and exchanges between Chinese newspapers and WAN, we respectfully ask your association to reconsider the decision to award Shi Tao the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom.
Sincerely,
The Secretariat China Newspaper Association |
