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Chinese Official Threatened an Italian News Reporter

During Xi Jinping’s visit to Italy, a Chinese media official from the Chinese Embassy in Rome threatened a female Italian news reporter from the Italian Newspaper Il Foglio multiple times.

The incident happened when Xi Jinping was holding a meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Rome on March 22. Yan Han, the lead official from the media office of the Chinese Embassy, came to threaten Giulia Pompili of Il Foglio. He said to her multiple times, “You must stop saying bad things about China.” ” I’m very clear who you are.” Ms. Pompili asked him to show his ID, but he refused. She took out her phone. Yang walked closer to her and requested her to “put down (her) phone.”

Ms. Pompili was covering the Asia-Pacific area for Il Foglio. In 2012, she won a news report award. She has been focusing on China for the past nine years. On April 9, 2016, she wrote an analysis on China’s news reporting industry. She asked, “How can a news reporter work in China? How can they find information in a country that mixes propaganda and news together? How does the government try to restrict the vitality of some factors of the media?”

Source: VOA, March 25, 2019
https://www.voachinese.com/a/chinese-official-threatens-italian-journalist-24032019/4846107.html