Chinese authorities in recent weeks have detained several Chinese nationals who have worked for international media outlets, which analysts say is aimed at chilling international media operating in the country by targeting their Chinese employees.
Last week, China arrested freelance filmmaker and photographer Du Bin, who once worked as a video journalist for The New York Times' Beijing bureau, for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble."
A week before Du's arrest, Bloomberg news assistant Haze Fan, a Chinese national, was placed in detention for "endangering national security" in Beijing.
Du Bin is a veteran photographer and had worked full-time for various media outlets, including the state-owned Beijing Youth Daily and Worker's Daily, and The New York Times before 2011.
Du Bin's sister Du Jirong told VOA last Friday that her brother is now detained in Daxing District Detention Center in Beijing.
"My brother has been staying at home since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. So I asked the police what 'trouble' has he 'provoked?' The policeman on the phone told me that the situation is 'complicated,' without giving me a specific reason," Du Jirong told VOA.
A friend of Du, who asked to remain anonymous, told VOA that Du's arrest might be related to his ongoing book projects. His recent book "Red Terror: Lenin's Communist Experiment," is scheduled to be published January 1, 2021, in Taiwan.
In 2017, he published "Siege of Changchun," documenting how communist troops blockaded the northeastern Chinese city in 1948 to starve out their rival nationalist soldiers.
He was detained for 37 days in 2013 for publishing "Tiananmen Massacre," a book about the government crackdown in 1989 on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing.
Chinese rights activist Hu Jia said that Du acts like a war correspondent and always rushes to the front line to expose human rights abuses in China.
"Du Bin comes from the bottom, so he knows that group well. He's full of compassion because he has seen so much suffering. He's simply using his lens and pen to document these sufferings," Hu told VOA.
Hu Jia added that he's not optimistic about Du Bin being released soon. According to Hu Jia, the authorities have increasingly been using high-tech and big data to suppress free speech and any defiant activities since President Xi Jinping came to power.
Media rights group Committee to Protect Journalists released a statement last Friday, calling the Chinese authorities to "immediately release journalist Du Bin and refrain from harassing and detaining members of the press."
Chinese journalists working for foreign media outlets
Haze Fan, a Chinese national who works for Bloomberg's Beijing Bureau, was detained in early December for "endangering national security," making her the first Chinese national arrested on such charges since the detention of a New York Times employee in 2004.
Rights activists say Chinese journalists working for foreign media outlets are facing growing security concerns under the country's shrinking space on free speech.
Cedric Alviani, the East-Asia bureau director at Reporters Without Borders, told VOA these arrests highlight the systematic crackdown on independent journalists in China, including those who work with foreign journalists not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
"The (Chinese) regime is using the foreign correspondents' sources and staff as hostage. … They are currently trying to blackmail foreign correspondents, [saying] if you publish something I dislike, I will punish your Chinese staff or I will punish your sources. This is of course a chilling message to foreign correspondents," Alviani told VOA.
He added that foreign media outlets are the only remaining voices in China that can supervise the CCP regime.
"The foreign correspondents in China are one of the last witnesses of the regime's action and the Chinese regime is trying to somehow get rid of this witness," Alviani said.
According to a survey released by CPJ earlier this month, China is the world's leading jailer of journalists for the second year in a row, with at least 47 journalists behind bars in 2020.
