Chinese police deny use of force, detention of US reporter

Local authorities in China’s Inner Mongolia region have denied they used force or detained an American reporter when she was questioned at a police station last week.
The Los Angeles Times said last week that one of its reporters was grabbed by the throat and pushed into a cell and held for more than four hours before being forced to leave the area in northern China.
“There’s no instance of the police using both hands to pinch the neck or being detained in a police cell, nor was there any instance of being detained or expelled,” the press office for Hohhot, the provincial capital, said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press.
The statement, dated Tuesday, said the reporter was interviewing a pedestrian and accused her of filming or photographing the person without the interviewee’s permission. It said the reporter chose to go back to Beijing voluntarily.
The newspaper’s Beijing bureau chief, Alice Su, who is the journalist in question, declined to comment. She was covering protests and class boycotts that had broken out in Inner Mongolia over a move to increase the use of Chinese in schools where Mongolian has been the main language of instruction.
The incident came at a time of growing pressure on foreign journalists in China. MDT/AP