Shocking footage has emerged of a BBC journalist being aggressively manhandled by a local Chinese man in Guangdong province, in the south-east of the country.
The reporter, Stephen McDonnell, formerly of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was recording a piece to camera following the death of 35 people after someone drove an SUV into a crowd in the city of Zhuhai.
Reporting the incident, which also left 45 injured, Mr McDonnell said he and his cameraman were being watched as they recorded their piece outside the stadium where the attack occurred.
During the recording, a man in a blue t-shirt approached Mr McDonnell and his colleague and attempted to stop them filming.
Walking into the shot from behind the journalist, the man approaches and then puts his arm across the veteran reporter demanding he “stop filming”.
“You should go now”, he said as he pushed the Australian BBC journalist. Justifying his aggression, which included pushing Mr McDonnell, the man said: “I’m a Chinese citizen, you are filming things in China – do you have a press card?”.
Mr McDonnell, after threatening to phone the police, said forthrightly in the native language: “You don’t have the right to bother us, it’s not your concern.”
The man then lunged for the cameraman, repeating his demand for the pair to leave. Mr McDonnell, writing for the BBC, said that it is known that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will get trained personnel to pose as locals to shut down foreign journalists.
Before the journalist started recording his report, he said that he was approached by a security guard, whose line of questioning left no doubt that the BBC was not welcome at the stadium.
“Are you journalists?”, the guard asked. When asked why he wanted to know, he chillingly responded: “Oh just to understand the situation.”
These tactics, Mr McDonnell wrote for the BBC, “don’t stop the stories”, instead, “it just makes China look bad”.
