Provisions of China’s counterterrorism bill inspired by foreign laws

China said Saturday that it will not renew press credentials of a French journalist over an article she wrote that critisised the country’s policy towards Muslim Uighers in Xinjiang.

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson explained that all they wanted was an apology to the people of China for what she wrote, saying while China “has consistently safeguarded the legal right of foreign news organizations and foreign correspondents to report in the country”, they don’t tolerate “the freedom to embolden terrorism”.

Gauthier, a Beijing-based correspondent for French news magazine L’Obs, wrote an essay that “flagrantly championed acts of terrorism and acts of cruelly killing innocents, triggering the Chinese people’s outrage”, the foreign ministry statement said.

Gauthier’s combative article, which was published last month after the 13 November terrorist attacks in Paris, questioned the Communist party’s policies in Xinjiang, a troubled and resource-rich region in China’s far-west that is home to the largely Muslim Uighur minority.

Gauthier has a number of supporters after her expulsion was announced, including Melissa Chan, who was kicked out of China in 2012 while she was working as a foreign correspondent for Al Jazeera.

China has adopted its first counter-terrorism legislation despite criticism that it could tighten media controls and threaten privacy as well as intellectual property rights in the East Asian state.

Earlier today the Global Times published a scathing editorial which tore into the journalist and her employer L’Obs, stating that their articles were “biased” and “unprofessional”.

According to the ministry, the action was initiated as the journalist “refused to apologize” to the Chinese people for her story and hence, it was “no longer suitable for her to work in China”.

Beijing considers condemnation of attacks in Xinjiang by foreign governments and the global press as weak, and has slammed Western countries for applying “double standards” on terrorism in the wake of the attacks in Paris. “If it was true that I was supporting terrorism, they should indict me, not expel me, it’s a crime”.

Gauthier, who spent 10 years in China as a child, was one of the rare foreign correspondents to speak fluent Mandarin, according to RFI’s former Beijing correspondent Stéphane Lagarde.

Police guard a shopping mall in in China’s western Xinjiang, a region that has seen an uptick in …

Gauthier said she wasn’t sure why the editor of the Global Times and the Foreign Ministry had singled her out so forcefully.

Press freedom campaign Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shares his concern. But the Uighurs say Beijing restricts their movement, adding they are frustrated by the economic development brought about by settlement by Han Chinese.