RSF director general calls China’s repression of journalists ‘totally insane’

It has been seven years since the Paris-based press freedom advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) established an Asia-Pacific office in Taipei. The organization’s new Director General Thibaut Bruttin led a delegation to Taiwan this week and met with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday.
Taiwan ranked first in Asia this year in the “World Press Freedom Index” released by Reporters Without Borders, and its global ranking rose to 27th, the best result since it was included in the ranking.
In an interview with Voice of America on October 14, Bruttin emphasized that Taiwanese media and foreign media in Taiwan face threats from Chinese political propaganda. He said that Taiwan, like many Baltic countries affected by Russian political propaganda, however, has demonstrated resilience and has rich experience in resisting cyber information attacks, which can be used as a reference for the world.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
VOA: China remains the biggest jailer of journalists. How concerned are you with China putting more and more reporters behind the bars and what the ripple effect or chilling effect that will have on others, be it reporters, analysts or opinion leaders?
Reporters Without Borders Director General Thibaut Bruttin: We’re very worried, obviously. We’ve had very troublesome reports about the situation of Zhang Zhan, for example, who was the laureate of the RSF’s [2021 press freedom] awards [in the courage category] and had been just released from jail, now is sent back to jail. We know the lack of treatment if you have a medical condition in the Chinese prisons.
Another example is Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong press freedom mogul, he’s very likely to die in jail if nothing happens. He’s over 70. And there are very little reasons to believe that, despite his dual citizenship, the British government will be able to get him a safe passage to Europe.
Second, it’s a problem for the general public especially in China, where a lot of people have been deprived of the rights to information worthy of that name. And we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people. And it’s totally scandalous to see how bad information is treated in the People’s Republic of China.
It’s even worse of China to export its repression, with international journalists being threatened or arrested. The Communist Party’s propaganda is even accessible in newsstands in New York.
VOA: Have you observed that China is going after more young people who have a way to speak up through social media? And hushing people up, coercing people to toe the party’s line, even when they are outside China?
Bruttin: Yes. For example, we were very shocked in April 2024, when one of our colleagues was briefly detained while covering the Jimmy Lai trial in Hong Kong. They were trying to silence people in mainland China and Hong Kong, and even trying to prevent people from attending the trial. So that nothing is published about it, that you don’t have any firsthand account.
Most of the journalists in China are afraid of being in touch with us, and their families as well. That’s totally insane. It has become the norm in China. So, it’s a tricky situation, and we have little reasons to believe that it’s getting any better. We call it “the great leap backwards” because we really feel that the situation has deteriorated, compared to 15 years ago.
During the Hu Jintao years, we felt it was more possible to be a journalist and to investigate. Under President Xi Jinping, there’s a crackdown on any voices, even like citizen journalists, who might have a minimal audience or are only partly critical of the government. They can’t stand that.
VOA: Other than the governments around the world, how can the people outside China help improve human rights in China?
Bruttin: What we need is to have a strategic dialogue with some countries who have long-existing economic and political relationships with China in order to improve the situation. For example, I was very shocked when my home country, France, hosted President Xi as a luminary while he was visiting France. I really felt that human rights were put under the red carpet. And that shouldn’t be the case. I mean, the fact that you have lots of economic involvement and trade relations [with China] should be an opportunity to discuss human rights in a very transparent way, and hopefully with more impact.
And today we don’t see that trend in governments, and that’s why we think that public pressure could be added. Take Liu Xiaobo for instance, as much as we know that he died of cancer, but bad treatment in prison shouldn’t be ignored. He was a Nobel laureate and very little was done to get him out of jail. The kind of situation that we saw a few years ago could repeat itself. And that’s the responsibility of democracies that want to have a role, but they are not performing that role.
VOA: Reporters Without Borders established the Asia Bureau here in Taiwan seven years ago. How has your work been developing?
Bruttin: We had a long conversation about where to base our office in Asia. Obviously, Hong Kong was a likely choice, but not safe legally, so we’re very happy to have made the choice of Taiwan. I think we were among the first international NGOs to have established a presence here. We kind of made a bet that Taipei would be a hub for human rights activists, and we were right. So, we’re very happy at what we’ve been able to achieve.
Our activities, including monitoring, training, reporting, advocating, are all anchored here in Taipei. We’ve been successful in attracting the attention of policymakers, donors, the media and human rights activists.