Journalists are having trouble going about their work in advance of the Beijing Olympics. Several reporters, photographers and TV camera operators have suffered harassment, from both police and citizens.
C M Yeung, of Hong Kong-based Now TV, says he was attacked by bystanders while filming a dispute among people queuing to buy tickets for Olympic events. Police, who refused to intervene, instead demanded that footage of the incident be deleted and that Yeung and his colleague, Melanie Chau, should sign a form agreeing that the matter was now closed. They refused to do so.
The day before Yeung was pulled backwards off a ladder by police while filming ticket queues. In a separate incident that day, F C Law of Hong Kong's Cable News TV, was pushed to the ground by police during a scuffle after police claimed that journalists had strayed outside the "permitted reporting zone."
A cameraman from TVB, another Hong Kong broadcaster, who attempted to film the incident had his footage confiscated while Felix Wong, a photographer for the South China Morning Post, was briefly detained.
Wong told the International Federation of Journalists: "We were confused by the arrangements because the police kept changing the so-called reporting area."
The incidents have heightened concerns that local police and security officials have failed to grasp the freedoms promised by the Chinese Government and the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG).
