Beijing’s foreign minister signing bilateral deals with leaders but reporters are blocked, sometimes physically, from asking questions
Journalists covering the Chinese foreign minister’s tour of the Pacific say they have been blocked from filming or accessing events, and that not a single question from a Pacific journalist has been allowed to be asked of Wang Yi.
On Sunday, as media set up to film the arrival of Wang at the Pacific Islands Forum building for a meeting with its secretary general, Henry Puna, the ABC was blocked from filming, despite having been given permission to do so. The Pacific Islands Forum intervened to allow the filming to continue, but Movono said that Chinese officials stood in front of the camera, trying to block the shot.
Movono said that when a journalist had called out questions, he was ordered to leave the room and a minder attempted to escort him out before fellow journalists stepped in to defend him.“I was quite disturbed by what I saw,” said Movono. “When you live in Fiji you kind of get used to the militarised nature of the place, but to see the Chinese officials do that was quite disturbing … To be a journalist in Fiji is to be worried about imprisonment all the time. Journalism is criminalised.
At Wang’s stops in Kiribati, Samoa and Fiji, no questions have been allowed at the press events held by the political leaders announcing bilateral deals.
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