A cameraman for a Hong Kong TV network manhandled and detained by police officers while reporting from Beijing today has been released.
Now TV reports that their cameraman, Chui Chun-ming, a Hongkonger based in Beijing, was detained for more than two hours after being aggressively detained by police officers in the capital this morning.
Chui and his team was covering a meeting of the Beijing Lawyers Association, which prominent human rights lawyer Xie Yanyi was scheduled to attend.
His arrest, caught on camera, prompted his Hong Kong-based cable TV network to demand his release.
The footage showed Beijing police officers forcing Chui to the ground and handcuffing him before forcing into a police van.
https://twitter.com/rthk_enews/status/996590612219543552
According to Now TV, Chui was given a bandaid for a cut on his forehead suffered during the arrest.
Video of the fracas, shows him restrained with his glasses knocked off. A woman can he heard saying “he’s bleeding” and “explain why you need to handcuff him?”
Now TV slammed the violent obstruction of an interview with their Beijing-based team, and was angry with the authorities’ treatment of their cameraman.
The human rights lawyer Xie Yanyi was among about 300 people — including human rights lawyers, legal assistants and activists — across the country who were arrested and interrogated in a crackdown on July 9, 2015, and was later referred to as the “709 crackdown.”
Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung told reporters at a press briefing this morning that officials at the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office were already looking into the case.
Cheung stressed it was important to understand the situation first, and expressed concern for reporters covering events, Ming Pao reports.
This comes days after another reporter for a Hong Kong news network, i-Cable, was kicked and beaten by two men while covering the 10th anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake.
According to the SCMP, the reporter was outside a school when he was dragged by the two men to a nearby river, and they repeatedly kicked and kneed him in the stomach.
Reader Interactions