Thursday August 2 7:40 AM ET
China Paper Sacks Organ Trade Reporter - Group
BEIJING (Reuters) - A newspaper in the southeastern province of Jiangxi has sacked a senior reporter whose article on organ harvesting in China riled Beijing, a human rights group said on Thursday.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center on Human Rights and Democracy said Yao Xiaohong, news director at the Jiangxi Metropolitan Consumer News, was fired for writing about a local court's alleged plot to sell the kidneys of an executed prisoner.
An editor at the paper, based in the city of Nanchang, told Reuters Yao left the newspaper a month ago because one of his stories had ``violated editorial rules.''
The editor said the reasons for Yao's departure were ''sensitive'' and declined to give details.
Yao's story -- one of a series of reports on the problem to leak out of China in recent years -- was published in April and subsequently appeared on the Web site of the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily.
In June, a Chinese doctor living in the United States told the House of Representatives subcommittee on human rights he removed skin and corneas from the corpses of more than 100 executed people, including ``victims of intentionally botched executions.''
The Chinese Foreign Ministry lashed back, saying the doctor had fabricated ``a vicious slander'' and ``sensational lies'' for his own personal benefit.
Yao was now working at a newspaper in Guangzhou, the rights group said.
MEDIA CRACKDOWN
His dismissal is the latest evidence of one of China's broadest media crackdowns in recent years.
Last month, a Communist Party document circulating among publications around the country threatened newspapers and magazines with instant closure if they stepped out of line, news industry sources said.
In many cases, newspapers have summarily fired editors in order to appease propaganda chiefs and avoid being shut down, they said.
In June, a deputy editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Henan province, the Dahebao, was fired for reports the paper carried about corruption.
In May, at least two senior editors at the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend were forced out over stories that suggested a gang leader executed for mass murder was the product of a deep social malaise.
The rights group also said on Thursday that Southern Weekend's readers' Web site -- a high-traffic intersection for exchange of information on social problems -- had been shut down.
An editor at the newspaper confirmed the readers' Web site had been closed recently but offered no details.
Officials and editors link the new hard line to political sensitivities ahead of the 16th Communist Party Congress late next year at which many of the party's top leaders, including General Secretary Jiang Zemin, are expected to step down.
Analysts say it is also part of a broader Communist Party effort to reassert control over a media industry being torn by commercial pressures as China moves toward a market economy.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010802/ts/china_media_dc_1.html
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