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According to Reuters on November 29th (local time), British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley met with journalists in Bucharest, Romania, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Foreign Ministers' Meeting was being held, and attacked a BBC reporter. "We summoned the Chinese ambassador to the UK," he said, adding that "protecting media freedom is very important."
"This is very core to the British belief," Cleverley said, adding, "It is very important that reporters do their job without fear of attack."
Analysts say that the incident is raising diplomatic tensions between China and the UK. The Chinese side argued that the British reporter did not disclose his identity.
China's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Zheng Zeguang, issued a statement on his website on the same day, saying, "The BBC reporter did not identify himself to the police at the time and did not comply with law enforcement. Related procedures, such as releasing him, were carried out within the legal framework."
At the same time, it denied, "The British side's claim that this reporter was 'arrested and beaten' by the Chinese police completely distorted the facts and was maliciously defamatory."
Ambassador Zheng said, "Foreign reporters must comply with Chinese laws and regulations while enjoying the right to report on newspapers according to law in China. We must not engage in activities that do not correspond to the status of a journalist."
Meanwhile, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the acting Chinese ambassador in connection with the incident in which a man in his 30s who had been demonstrating against China in front of the Chinese consulate in Manchester in northwestern England last month was taken to the consulate and assaulted.
2022/12/07 10:00 KST
