China has refused to renew the press credentials of a French journalist, effectively expelling her, unless she recants one of her stories, the reporter said today, the first such case since 2012.
Ursula Gauthier, a Beijing-based correspondent for French news magazine L'Obs, must issue a public apology for an article she wrote last month or China's foreign ministry will not renew her press credentials, set to expire on December 31, officials told Gauthier on Christmas Day.
"They confirmed that if I did not make a public apology on all the points that had 'hurt the Chinese people' ... My press card would not be renewed and I would have to leave on December 31," she told AFP.
Gauthier would be the first foreign correspondent in China to be expelled since the 2012 expulsion of Melissa Chan, correspondent for the English-language service of Al Jazeera.
