China Releases Another Journalist
Days after a Hong Kong reporter was released from a Chinese jail, another Chinese journalist has been freed. Yu Huafeng, an editor at the Southern Metropolis Daily, was released Friday after serving four years of a 12-year sentence for embezzlement. That conviction was seen by many as punishment for groundbreaking reporting his paper did on the SARS outbreak and on the beating death of a young man named Sun Zhigang while in police custody in Guangzhou. Yu’s release came three days after the freeing of Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong reporter for the Singapore-based Straits Times who had served two years on a spying conviction. Another Chinese journalist, Fuzhou Daily editor Li Changqing, was released earlier this month. Li had been imprisoned for spreading false terrorist information in connection with an article that appeared on an overseas Chinese website. Austin Ramzy (’03) blogs for TIME’s The China Blog.
