PRESS WATCH : China Syndrome

Yet another correspondent has been harassed by China in that nation’s inexcusable and continuing breach of the generally accepted standards that protect foreign journalists around the world.

The latest victim is Lena Sun, the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Beijing.

Officials of the clandestine State Security Ministry, armed with a search warrant, scoured Sun’s office for more than two hours. They confiscated personal papers, notebooks and a list of telephone numbers of relatives of Chinese dissidents from her office safe. During the search the correspondent was told that one of her sources had been arrested.

The U.S. State Department lodged an immediate protest with Beijing deploring this latest harassment of a foreign journalist. In the last six weeks the New York Times bureau chief in Beijing has been summoned twice by the Foreign Ministry and criticized for his articles. A British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent was detained for five hours on April 30 and his press credentials were confiscated.

Sun’s request to meet with the director of the Foreign Ministry’s Information Department to discuss the incident was rejected because, she was told, he was “too busy.”

During the search, government agents accused her of having engaged in activities incompatible with her status as a foreign journalist. They would not elaborate and said a decision on whether the reporter would be expelled was not up to them.

Sun’s papers should be returned promptly. Beijing’s attempt to censure the press is reprehensible.