After the Dutch national public broadcaster revealed that a reporter from the media was violently pushed to the ground, snatched his backpack, and taken to the police station for investigation when he tried to cover a demonstration outside a bank in Chengdu, international social media platforms X account "Teacher Li is not your teacher" exposed related videos on Saturday.
The video shows that when a Dutch reporter tried to approach the rights defenders for an interview, plainclothes and police officers nearby swarmed the reporter and pushed him down, snatched away the microphone and used a "black umbrella" to cover the camera. Chinese police officers also confiscated journalists' equipment from police vehicles. A few hours later, when they were released and returned to the scene, the rights defenders were nowhere to be seen. The French Broadcasting Corporation reported that at the police station, Chinese police refused to allow Dutch reporters to make calls and asked them to wait for officials from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Dutch journalist was released by police hours later with the assistance of representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But as reporters left the police station, multiple cars followed them, further disrupting their reporting.
In response to the above-mentioned incident, the Foreign Correspondents' Association in China issued a statement on March 1, calling on China to protect the work safety and reporting rights of all foreign journalists in China, and emphasized that it was "extremely disturbed" by this violent incident. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was also asked about the above incident at a regular press conference that day. Mao Ning said she was "unaware of the specific situation," but she promised that "China has always protected the legitimate rights and interests of foreign resident news organizations and foreign journalists in accordance with the law, and provided convenience for them to engage in news reporting in accordance with the law."