China mining town rounds up fake reporters
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Dec 8 (Reuters) - A Chinese city in a region notorious for fatal coal mining accidents has rounded up 80 people claiming to be "reporters" who extorted money from officials and owners of illegal mines by threatening media exposure, state media said on Friday. China has the world's deadliest coal mining industry, and national media regularly report on official cover-ups of fatal accidents, a near-daily occurrence. But it has also spawned an army of blackmailers demanding hush money in the northern province of Shanxi, where a quarter of China's coal is produced, the official China Youth Daily said. "Fake reporters have been rampant these two years," Yang Zhiming, an official in Shanxi's Luliang city, was quoted as saying. Yang said that in a three-month crackdown, Luliang had detained 80 people claiming to be reporters but many of whom were actually jobless men who said they worked for publications that were discovered to be nonexistent. "They could be tending their barbecue stalls in the morning and then rush to the scene of a sudden incident in the afternoon," Yang was quoted as saying, referring to mining accidents. Of those detained, 44 were transferred to judicial departments and some were charged, the China Youth Daily said. "We could do little about the fake reporters even though we suffered so much because of them," it quoted another unnamed local official as saying. "We are vulnerable in their hands." Chinese officials have been widely accused of colluding with coal mine owners to protect illegal and dangerous mining operations as coal prices surge as a result of the country's economic boom. Many officials have their own stakes in the lucrative business. About 3,630 miners died in more than 2,000 accidents in the first 10 months of the year in China. In the rush for profits, safety regulations are often ignored, production is pushed beyond safe limits and dangerous mines that have been shut down are reopened illegally.
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