Chinese authorities assaulted three journalists from a Japanese news agency in their Beijing hotel room, kicking them and destroying two computers, the agency said early yesterday.
The three journalists from Kyodo News were in the Chinese capital covering a National Day rehearsal when authorities stormed into the room of their hotel on Friday night, the news agency said.
Kyodo said a reporter and two cameramen were kicked “and hit on their heads to make them kneel down,” without specifying who the “authorities” were.
It also did not disclose the nationality of the three journalists.
The attackers threw the two computers out of the room and into the corridor of the hotel, which is near Tiananmen Square, the venue of the National Day celebrations scheduled for Oct. 1.
China’s Foreign Ministry had ordered news organizations not to take photos when the country conducted a rehearsal on Sept. 6, but the ministry has not issued such an order since then, Kyodo said.
Security forces have swarmed over central Beijing in the lead-up to a parade that will mark 60 years since the founding of Communist China.
Businesses, schools and traffic shut down as columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other hardware rumbled down the city’s deserted main east-west thoroughfare, the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, and toward Tiananmen Square.
Security forces had earlier swarmed over central Beijing, shooing citizens away from what will be the parade’s route through the heart of the city.
Earlier this week, hundreds of journalists protested in Hong Kong against alleged police brutality toward three of their colleagues covering alleged syringe attacks in China’s restive Xinjiang region.
Meanwhile, a man attacked a French tourist with a knife yesterday near Tiananmen Square, in the second knife attack in the area in two days, state media reported.
The woman was slightly injured and was taken to a hospital, Xinhua news agency said. It did not identify her.
Xinhua said a 41-year-old man from Nanchang in southeast Jiangxi Province injured the French woman on Dashilan, Beijing’s oldest commercial street, near the southern end of Tiananmen Square.
It said patrolling policemen caught the man at the scene.
TYPHOON: The storm’s path indicates a high possibility of Krathon making landfall in Pingtung County, depending on when the storm turns north, the CWA said Typhoon Krathon is strengthening and is more likely to make landfall in Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said in a forecast released yesterday afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the CWA’s updated sea warning for Krathon showed that the storm was about 430km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point. It was moving in west-northwest at 9kph, with maximum sustained winds of 119kph and gusts of up to 155kph, CWA data showed. Krathon is expected to move further west before turning north tomorrow, CWA forecaster Wu Wan-hua (伍婉華) said. The CWA’s latest forecast and other countries’ projections of the storm’s path indicate a higher
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) is set to issue sea and land warnings for Tropical Storm Krathon as projections showed that the tropical storm could strengthen into a typhoon as it approaches Taiwan proper, the CWA said yesterday. The sea warning is scheduled to take effect this morning and the land warning this evening, it said. The storm formed yesterday morning and in the evening reached a point 620 nautical miles (1,148km) southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, moving west-southwest at 4 kph as it strengthened, the CWA said. Its radius measured between 220km and 250km, it added. Krathon is projected