BBC reporter forced to flee China after threats
THE BBC’s Beijing correspondent has fled to Taiwan following threats from Chinese officials – after he exposed persecution of the Uighurs and reported on the rise of Covid-19.
John Sudworth said he had faced surveillance, obstruction and intimidation as he revealed the pandemic’s origins and slave labour in Xinjiang.
The BBC said he had “exposed truths the Chinese authorities did not want the world to know” and he would continue his work as China correspondent from the city of Taipei.
Mr Sudworth – who revealed Uighurs were being forced to work in cotton factories on BBC One’s Panorama show – told Radio 4’s Today: “Over the last few years the pressure and threats from Chinese authorities as a result of my reporting
have been pretty constant. But in recent months they have intensified.
“The BBC has faced a full-on propaganda attack not just aimed at the organisation itself, but at me personally, across multiple Communist-party controlled platforms.
“We have faced threats of legal action as well as massive surveillance now, obstruction and intimidation whenever and wherever we try to film.
“In the end we, as a family based in Beijing, along with the BBC, decided it was just too risky to carry on – which is, of course, sadly precisely the point of that kind of intimidation – and we have relocated to Taiwan.”
Mr Sudworth said other foreign journalists had been forced to make similar journeys to Taiwan, where there is much greater press freedom.
China regards the island as a breakaway province and wants to reclaim it.
Mr Sudworth, who was based in China for nine years, said: “We left in a hurry, followed by plain-clothed police all the way to the airport and through the check-in hall, the true grim reality for reporters here being made clear to the very end.”
The Global Times, a Chinese staterun website, claimed Mr Sudworth
“infamous in China for his many biased stories distorting China’s Xinjiang policies and Covid-19 responses, has left the mainland and is believed to be hiding in Taiwan”.
Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “The closing of any pretence at media freedom in China is leaving citizens exposed to greater danger from a vengeful Communist Party. “John Sudworth has been heroic.” Mr Tugendhat was one of nine British critics of China, including five MPs and two peers, sanctioned by Beijing. That was in response to the UK’s asset freezes and travel bans for people and organisations linked to abuses in Xinjiang, in the north-west.
China has detained Muslim Uighurs at camps where allegations of torture, systematic brainwashing and sexual abuse have emerged.