DATELINE: HONG KONG
They are right when they say that we
[Western journalists] are shooting sugar coated bullets!: Dr.
Johnathan Mirsky, the Hong Kong correspondent for the London
Times.
Summary: This text is an excerpt from a paper delivered
by Dr. Mirsky to the Commonwealth Journalists Association meeting in
Hong Kong. It indicates the level of surveillance imposed on foreign
correspondents in China and suggests that Beijing was already
imposing restrictions on journalists covering Hong Kong Affairs.
In 1991, I made my very last visit to China. I went in with the [British] Prime Minister.
On my very first morning there, the security man who had been keeping an eye on me for many years, Mr. Tong, found me in the coffee shop at eight o'clock in the morning. He said to me, "Where were you last night? I came to see you in your room."
"What time was that, Mr. Tong?" I asked.
"Eight thirty," he said, "You should have been there. Where were you?"
I haven't been to bed at eight thirty for many years so I said, "Why don't you tell me where I was Mr. Tong?"
So he gets out his notebook and says," At eight thirty five you left the hotel. You took a taxi with the following number. You went to such and such an address. You were there for so long. You kept the taxi. You came back. You went to the coffee shop and you had a slice of apple pie and a glass of milk and you went to bed."
"Fabulous, Mr. Tong," I said.
"By the way," he said," we will not welcome you any more to China after you leave".
So September the second, 1991, was my last visit. Years pass. In the last couple of months there have been a few meetings at the [Hong Kong] convention centre, sponsored so carefully by Peking. They managed to make the most capitalist venue in Hong Kong look so much like the Great Hall of the People. Even on Hong Kong soil [administered by the British] you had to apply to go to this. You had to bring a letter from your publisher proving who you were. So I went down to the Xinhua office and said, "I want to go to this thing".
Now the man who we liase with there said, "I have never heard of you and I have never heard of your paper [the London Times]".
Now I have to say, that hurt my feelings. Not the part about my paper you understand.
So he said," You get a letter from your publisher and send us your ID card and we will allow you to go to this meeting , if you get us all this stuff in time".
I gave it to him on time and they said, "You can't go".
I complained a bit and I got various friends in China to complain a bit and so the Xinhua man rang me up and said, "We are making a special exception on your part and we will let you in".
Although he had never heard of me, according to him, when I came into the convention centre the next morning, there must have been a hundred correspondents standing around. he pointed over the top of all of them and said, "Mirsky come over here". He gave me my badge and I finally got in.
But then I wanted to go to the first meeting [of the Beijing appointed Provisional Legislature] across the border in Shenzen. The Chinese are a bit nervous about having legal action taken against them if they have what appears to be a second government of Hong Kong. [China launched its Hong Kong Provisional Legislature on 25.1.97, a month before the official handover. It did so in competition to the elected Hong Kong, Legco, which Beijing promised to abolish.]
This would have involved an hour to get there, a few hours in Shenzen, and an hour to get back.
"You cannot go to this," said Xinhua.
"Gosh," I said, "This has to do with the future of Hong Kong!"
"The decision to bar you from Shenzen, has been take at the highest level [in Beijing]," Xinhua said.
This is not encouraging.