Zhao Yan

Zhao Yan

"In September 2004, Zhao Yan, a local journalist working for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times, was arrested on charges of leaking state secrets. So far the authorities have not given the exact reason for Zhao's arrest. It is said that State Security officials accuse him of being the source for an article by Joseph Kahn in The New York Times reporting Jiang Zemin would resign from his last position of power as head of the military two weeks before the official announcement was made." wiki see timeline

"Zhao Yan, a journalist with the Beijing-based magazine China Reform, has come under mounting pressure as a result of articles he’s written describing the plight of peasants at the hand of avaricious officials. Earlier this year Zhao was forced out of China Reform, apparently after lobbying by Fuzhou officials. Following is one of Zhao Yan’s articles relating to a peasant controversy in Fujian Province."

"Zhao Yan was born on March 14, 1962, and graduated from Heilongjiang University. After working briefly as a police officer in Harbin, he became a journalist and worked for a publication owned by the Legal Daily. In 2002, he joined China Reform, an official publication, rapidly earning a reputation for his aggressive exposés of rural issues and official corruption. Along with two other peasant advocates, lawyer Yu Meisun and constitutional scholar Li Boguang, Zhao also started to play an active role in advising rural residents displaced by a dam in Hebei Province and resettled in a village on the outskirts of Tangshan, Fujian Province.

"The peasants claimed that the mayor of Tangshan had misappropriated the compensation owed to them and more than 10,000 signed a petition demanding his recall. In March 2004, Zhao left China Reform; the magazine was subsequently shut down by the government in December 2004, and his editor Chen Min was briefly detained at the time."