For the world's sake, China needs to open up their news reporting. This is awful. http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0002/20060711/0426452151.htm Chinese bird flu whistle-blower jailed: state media BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court jailed a farmer who reported bird flu outbreaks to the central government to three-and-a-half years for fraud and blackmail, state media said on Tuesday. Qiao Songju, a goose farmer in the eastern province of Jiangsu, was arrested a month after he reported bird flu outbreaks in the nearby province of Jiangsu in October, Xinhua news agency said. Qiao had denied most, but not all, of the charges, Xinhua said, without explaining who might have been blackmailed or whether the charges were linked to his bird flu reports, which turned out to be correct. "The defendant used measures such as fabricating facts and hiding truth to swindle public and personal property ... so he should be punished for two crimes," Xinhua quoted the prosecution as saying. Chinese media reported last month that China was considering fines for media outlets that report emergencies, such as riots, natural disasters and outbreaks of disease such as SARS or bird flu, without authorization. China has a long history of covering up emergency incidents, and news blackout are regularly imposed by sensitive propaganda officials nervous about the effects of news reports on the image of the ruling party.
I thought you loved it when whistleblowers were jailed and news was suppressed in the aid of big and powerful governments. Or is that just the rule in America?
I agree with Bigtexxx that the PRC has a big problem with openness. The CCP is too obsesessed with controlling information and believes its patriotic to not report news that will make the PRC look bad, sounds familiar don't it. That said though there's not enough known about this situation to saw whether Qiao should be jailed because there also is a lot of corruption in the PRC which the government has been cracking down on. It is still possible this guy is both a whistleblower on bird flu but also corrupt.
Bullsh!t report from Reuters, as usual when it comes to PRC. Hilarious responses from bigtexxx and Sishir Chang, as usual too. The guy was jailed on charges of fraud and blackmailing, not for reporting bird flu. Obviously this goes beyond comprehension of you two. Should any alleged whistleblower in PRC be immune to any criminal prosecution? I don't even know there is such a class of citizens in the good ol' USA that are above the law.
If you read my response I didn't say he was necessarily jailed for reporting bird flu. I said we don't know enough yet to know for sure.
He wasn't arrested for bird flu whistle-blowing, if I understand correctly...why is this a big deal, then?
LOL so true. Although I'm somewhat surprised that he spurned his homeland to move to this God-foresaken country run by George W Bush!
"Communist China"? Are you serious? What's communist about PRC? How much do you know about communism and how much do you know about China? It's already 2006, cheetah, wake up from your Cold War fantasy dream and smell the coffee! Reuters is supposed to be a reputable news agency, but for whatever reason (my guess is many Brits, including some working in Reuters, are still reeling from the "loss" of Hong Kong to PRC), it has a history of twisting facts to slant and undermine PRC. This report is one such example. First off, the jailed guy is not even a goose farmer. If you travel to PRC and would like to have goose meat, I'll say good luck finding a restaurant serving goose, which is extremely rare, if any. Goose is not popular in Chinese culinary. The reason is goose is more difficult to cook and its meat texture is much tougher than, say, duck meat. If a farmer in PRC exclusively raises geese for a living, he might as well file for bankruptcy (correctly speaking there is no such thing as filing for bankruptcy in PRC as a farmer but you get the idea). So what was the jailed guy? A duck farmer, for crying out loud. Why couldn't the British journalist get this little fact straight? The only possible answer to this $64 question I can think of is that he/she is 1) obtuse, 2) ignorant, 3) incompetent, or 4) any combination of the above. Second, the deaths of fowls allegedly witnessed by the jailed guy to authority may or may not be caused by the avian flu. I certainly have not seen WHO verified the occurrence. Third, just by looking at this paragraph I can tell the reporter's (and the editor's) knowledge on PRC's geography is laughable. Beijing is not adjacent to Jiangsu province if you wonder. Last but the most important, there is considerable amount of shoddy journalism in the article. Let's say John Doe spotted his boss stealing a large sum of money from the company to buy expensive gifts for his wife. A wickedly horny guy who knew his boss's wife is a hottie, Mr. Doe extorted the couple and demanded sexual favor from the wife. Feeling humiliated, she reported to authority. Mr. Doe ended up in jail with a conviction of attempted rape. Imagine Xinhua news agency picked up the story reported by AP and came up with its own version with the headline "Land of freedom and justice: US jailed whistleblower who caught his boss stealing money from company." Sounds outrageous? This is exactly what the Reuters did with its report on PRC jailing bird flu whistleblower. PRC has many problems that are unique to its own, or at least not typically seen here in the USA. It takes people who have lived there for extended time, or people with open and fair mind, to recognize as well as understand these problems, and criticize (bash if you will) PRC for these matters. It's bigtexxx' prerogative to bash China, so is everyone else's on this board, and rightfully so, on the lack of openness in reporting its problems. But the article he selected in doing it is unfortunately and seriously lacking journalism integrity, or simply put, full of ****. Of course bigtexxx's track record of xenophobic attitude in his various posts does not help in serious discussion, either. Also FYI, I don't find the same sh!tty report from AP or AFP. The anti-PRC journalism from Reuters has undoubtedly reached a new low.
