image source,VIDEO OBTAINED BY REUTERS
Hundreds of people participated in a protest on Shanghai’s Urumqi Middle Road, and police arrested a number of people.
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reporter Ed Laurence was detained and beaten by police while reporting on protests against China’s new crown “zero” policy on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai.
Lawrence was removed from the scene and held for several hours before being released.
The BBC said in a statement: “It is extremely concerning that one of our journalists has been attacked in this way in the course of his work.”
The Chinese government stated that Lawrence did not show his press card at the time.
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On Sunday (November 27), Lawrence filmed the largest protest in China on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai.
Video widely shared on social media showed several officers grabbing Lawrence and pinning him to the ground. He was punched and kicked by police before being taken away in handcuffs, the BBC said.
The British broadcasting company BBC said that such encounters with journalists were “extremely worrying”.
The BBC also said in a statement that it had not received a formal explanation or apology from China, “except that the officials who later released him claimed that the police detained him for his own good, in case he caught the new crown virus from the crowd”.
“We do not think this is a plausible explanation,” the statement said.
At a regular press conference on Monday (November 28), the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not specifically apologize for the police brutality and arrest of a foreign journalist certified by China.
“According to what we have learned from relevant authorities in Shanghai, he did not identify himself as a reporter, nor did he voluntarily show his press card,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
Ed Lawrence is the BBC’s China correspondent
Lawrence retweeted the BBC’s statement on Monday, adding that he knew at least one local who was there had also been arrested “for trying to stop the police from hitting me”.
The Foreign Correspondents Club China (FCC) said it was “extremely disturbed” by the treatment of journalists covering the protests.
At least one other foreign journalist of Swiss nationality was also briefly detained on Sunday while reporting elsewhere in Shanghai.
“Journalists from several media outlets were physically harassed by the police while covering the protests, and at least two journalists were detained,” the Foreign Media Press Club in China said.
“In one particularly shocking incident, a British journalist was wrestled to the ground by multiple police officers and led away.”
The Foreign Media Press Club in China pointed out that according to Chinese law, foreign journalists “have the right to report without restriction in China.”
After a fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, killed 10 people last week, protests broke out in some Chinese cities against the Chinese government and its COVID-19 lockdown policy.
Many believed that residents of the apartment complex in Urumqi, which was locked down, could not escape and firefighters could not respond in time because of the new crown quarantine measures. Although the local government denied the claim, the anger of the Chinese people led to street protests in several cities.
So far the Chinese government has neither acknowledged nor responded in any official way to the protests. However, news of the protests spread rapidly via Chinese social media, despite China’s strict censorship regime.
The British government condemned the detention of BBC reporter Lawrence by the Chinese police. Business Secretary Grant Sharps told the British media that the actions of the Chinese police were “unacceptable” and “worrying”.
He also stressed: “No matter what happens, freedom of the press is sacrosanct.”
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