{"id":1242,"date":"2014-09-30T23:59:51","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T23:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2014\/09\/30\/chinese-embassy-warns-wider-implications-over-foreign-correspondent-story-xinjiang-conflict\/"},"modified":"2014-09-30T23:59:51","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T23:59:51","slug":"chinese-embassy-warns-wider-implications-over-foreign-correspondent-story-xinjiang-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/chinese-embassy-warns-wider-implications-over-foreign-correspondent-story-xinjiang-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese embassy warns of &#8216;wider implications&#8217; over Foreign Correspondent story on Xinjiang conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Senior Chinese officials have warned the ABC there will be &#8220;wider implications&#8221; over its Foreign Correspondent story about unrest in western China.<\/p>\n<p>Updated 1 Oct 2014, 12:03am<\/p>\n<p>ABC China correspondent Stephen McDonell and cameraman Wayne McAllister recently travelled to China&#39;s western province of Xinjiang to investigate reports of conflict in the homeland of Turkic-speaking ethnic Uighurs.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of people have died during the past year in the province &ndash; sometimes as a result of knife or bomb attacks on random members of the public, sometimes following what appear to have been disputes which have spun out of control.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/upuhrVgFHTc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>ABC communications director Michael Millett confirmed &quot;fairly senior&quot; officials from the Chinese embassy had met with the ABC at its Ultimo headquarters in Sydney to ask it not to screen the show, which will go to air at 8:00pm tonight.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The meeting was about two weeks ago and lasted about an hour,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They were polite and forcefully aired concerns about the Foreign Correspondent program, which will air tonight.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think they were concerned about being unfairly portrayed in the story about the situation in the north-west region.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Millett said the officials did tell the meeting there would be &quot;wider implications&quot; if the program aired.<\/p>\n<p>The ABC has business relationships with CCTV and Shanghai Media Group, where the broadcaster&#39;s content is aired and published.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Team followed by minders, interviews filmed by Chinese officials<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>McDonell said the team in China was subjected to intense surveillance by Chinese officials, who attempted to limit access and information about the region<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2014-09-30\/journalists-blocked-from-reaching-areas-in-xinjiang\/5776086\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">&quot;For a journalist, being in Xinjiang is like being in North Korea. You get in a lift, they follow you in. You sit down for breakfast, they surround you,&quot; he wrote.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Foreign Correspondent executive producer Steve Taylor said the level of scrutiny was higher than on previous visits to Xinjiang.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Stephen was there in 2009 to do a story on the Uighurs. He had a clear understanding of the sorts of pressures that were potentially unfolding. It&#39;s got a lot more intense and explosive since then,&quot; Taylor said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#39;s a super sensitive issue in China.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He said the surveillence and &quot;ever-growing&quot; team of minders was more than the team had previously experienced or expected.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think it&#39;s fair to say whenever Stephen does a contentious assignment in China the crew get attention. I don&#39;t think they had experienced it to this extent.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They were keen to control the message. People tried to control &#8230; and spoil Stephen and Wayne&#39;s efforts.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It says a lot about the story itself.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They didn&#39;t quite expect the number of people and the scale of surveillance they were subjected to.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The ABC has attempted several times to contact the Chinese embassy in Canberra for comment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Watch China &#8211; Crackdown on Foreign Correspondent on <a href=\"http:\/\/iview.abc.net.au\/programs\/foreign-correspondent\/NC1402H028S00\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">iview<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"180\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Va7SrDU75dI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senior Chinese officials have warned the ABC there will be &#8220;wider implications&#8221; over its Foreign Correspondent story about unrest in western China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}