French journalist Ursula Gauthier kicked out of China for slamming Beijing's Uyghur policy

[ArsalanKhan21]

China is also using terrorism as an excuse to suppress rights of the Uyghurs in Uyghuristan also known as Xinjiang.

China 'expels' French journalist over Uyghur report - CNN.com

French journalist Ursula Gauthier kicked out of China for slamming Beijing's Uyghur policy
Kevin Wang, CNN

Updated 10:04 PM ET, Sat December 26, 2015

Ursula Gauthier works at her desk in her apartment in Beijing on December 26, 2015.
Story highlights

• Gauthier's article described the "merciless crushing of the Muslim Uyghur minority"
• She said China had no basis for comparing this with the global war on terror
• China said her article "overtly advocates for acts of terrorism and killings of innocent civilians"

(CNN)Chinese authorities say they're not renewing the press credentials for a French journalist whose recent reporting questioned Beijing's "ulterior motives" in standing in solidarity with France after the November Paris attacks, and criticized China's handling of its Uyghur minority.

Ursula Gauthier, a Beijing-based correspondent for French magazine L'OBS since 2009, wrote in an article published on November 18 -- less than a week after coordinated attacks killed at least 130 people in Paris -- that China had no basis in drawing parallels between the international pledge to fight against terrorism and its own version, that she calls "the merciless crushing of the Muslim Uyghur minority."

"In other words, if China declares its solidarity with nations threatened by Islamic State, in return it expects the support of the international community in its own entanglements with its most restless minority," she added.

The piece drew strong criticism from the Chinese authorities.

Embassies warn of threats against Westerners in Beijing 01:55
In a statement posted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry Saturday, Spokesperson Lu Kang said Gauthier's article "overtly advocates for acts of terrorism and killings of innocent civilians, and caused public outrage among the Chinese people.

"Given that Gauthier failed to make a serious apology to the Chinese people for her wrongful speech advocating for terrorism acts, it is no longer appropriate for her to continue working in China."

Nothing in common
In her article, Gauthier wrote that shortly after Chinese President Xi Jinping assured French counterpart Francois Hollande of China's commitment to fight against terrorism, Chinese police announced the capture of the leaders of a September 18 attack that claimed some 50 lives at a remote coal mine in Xinjiang's Baicheng County.

Xinjiang violence: Does China have a terror problem?

"But, bloody though it was, the Baicheng attack had nothing in common with the 13th November attacks," Gauthier wrote, according to an English translation of her original report published by China Digital Times.

"In fact it was an explosion of local rage such as have blown up more and more often in this distant province whose inhabitants, turcophone and Muslim Uyghurs, face pitiless repression."

Xinjiang attacks shifting to civilians 02:41
Chinese authorities and state media presented a different version of the event. They said security forces, along with local officials and residents, carried out a 56-day operation against a group of "violent attackers" responsible for ambushing police and civilians at the mine. The police said the attacks were directly planned by an "extreme organization outside the border," whose members had been watching and listening to extreme religious materials and received specific guidance before carrying out the attack.

All the alleged attackers were killed by November 12, according to the police.

While the Chinese police did not specify the ethnicity of the alleged attackers, Gauthier said they were a small group of Uyghurs "pushed to the limit, probably in revenge for an abuse, an injustice or an expropriation."

Who are the Uyghurs?
The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group living primarily in China's northwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region marked by occasional tensions between the Uyghur and the Han Chinese communities. Security has increasingly heightened in Xinjiang over recent years as the area has seen violent incidents such as the 2014 attack targeting civilians an Urumqi market that left at least 31 dead and 90 injured.

"But so long as the Uyghurs' situation continues to get worse, China's magnificent mega-cities will be vulnerable to the risk of machete attacks." Gauthier wrote.

China's bold ethnic experiment 03:55
Human rights observers accuse China of being heavy-handed and treating the Uyghurs unfairly by restricting their freedom of religion and speech.

Beijing officials say they are only going after perpetrators planning or carrying out terrorist attacks, and accuse western governments, rights activists and journalists of being hypocritical and applying double standards when criticizing China's ethnic policy and management of other domestic issues.

Support
Meanwhile, a number of western journalists and human rights observers were quick to support Gauthier on social media.

Ursula Gauthier won't be going quietly. Chinese media starting to lay out attacks on her. 【热点】这位被外交部取消驻京记者证的法国人，写了什么让人没法忍的话？

— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) December 26, 2015
"Ursula Gauthier won't be going quietly. Chinese media starting to lay out attacks on her," tweeted The New York Times' China correspondent Chris Buckley.

Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East Asia, tweeted, "Expulsion of French journalist @ugauthier for Xinjiang article opens a new era for foreign media in China. French gvt silence a mistake."

China's Global Times has gone on a campaign to character assassinate reporter Ursula Gauthier - a typical authoritarian strategy.

— Melissa Chan (@melissakchan) December 26, 2015
The French Foreign Ministry said in a Friday statement they regret that Gauthier's credential was not renewed, and they "recall the importance of the role journalists play throughout the world."

Gauthier is the first high-profile foreign journalist to be expelled from China since Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan in 2012.

On Gauthier's expulsion, Chan tweeted, "Gauthier was told she could stay in China if she publicly apologized for... yep, you guess it: hurting the feelings of the Chinese people."

Chinese reaction
But on the other side, Chinese state media and many Chinese Internet users backed the government's decision.

"China ought to send such a voice out to the world. Anyone daring to challenge the justice of humanity is not welcomed by the Chinese people," one Weibo user wrote.

"Gauthier is a terrorist herself since she is advocating for them. I firmly support the government to rid this Gauthier who disguises herself as a journalist, and never allow her to China's territory again," said another.

An online poll conducted by state-run newspaper The Global Times showed 94.6% of nearly 200,000 surveyed people support Gauthier's removal.

Previous criticism
This is not the first time Gauthier has drawn the ire of Beijing authorities.

Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying expressed frustration over Gauthier's reporting on China's counter-terrorism policy.

"We cannot understand why other countries' counter-terrorism policies are legitimate, but China's counter-terrorism activities are so-called ethnic oppression," Hua said. "This is an absurd logic. It is political prejudice and double standards. I think it is necessary to clarify what happened and rectify the issue. "

Foreign journalists in China complain authorities are increasingly restricting press freedom in the country, making it harder and harder for them to report freely. Chinese officials deny the claim, and instead insist foreign journalists should play by the same rules as Chinese journalists and refrain from violating laws and regulations when reporting.

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

China uses flamethrower to hunt Xinjiang 'terrorists' | The Japan Times

Asia Pacific
China uses flamethrower to hunt Xinjiang ‘terrorists’
Reuters
Nov 23, 2015

BEIJING – Chinese forces used a flamethrower to force more than 10 “terrorists” from a cave in the western Xinjiang region, the military’s top newspaper said Monday, in a graphic account of the hunt for what Beijing called foreign-led extremists.

China said Friday that security forces had recently killed 28 members of a group that carried out a deadly attack at a coal mine in Aksu in September, the first official mention of the incident reported by Radio Free Asia about two months ago.

In its account, which could not be independently verified, the official People’s Liberation Army Daily said armed police had tracked the attackers into the mountains “like eagles discovering their prey.”

The PLA Daily said the special forces used flash grenades and tear gas to force the attackers out of hiding, but when those methods failed, a senior officer said: “Use the flamethrower.”

After that, the newspaper said the attackers came out at the troops wielding knives and that they were then “completely annihilated.”

China’s government says it faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists in energy-rich Xinjiang, on the border of central Asia, where hundreds have died in violence in recent years.

Rights groups say China has never presented convincing evidence of the existence of a cohesive militant group fighting the government. Much of the unrest, they argue, is due to frustration at controls on the culture and religion of the Muslim Uighur people who live in Xinjiang.

Beijing vehemently denies accusations of rights abuses, though independent verification of the situation in Xinjiang is hard because of tight government controls on visits by foreign reporters.

In a statement in response to the PLA Daily report, Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for exile group the World Uyghur Congress, said: “The Paris attacks gave China a political excuse to brazenly use flamethrowers to clamp down on unarmed Uighurs who have no just legal protection and who seek to avoid arrest.”

Senior Chinese officials have increasingly described the security challenges in Xinjiang as an important front in the global fight against terrorism. Western nations, however, have been reluctant to cooperate in China’s anti-terrorism campaign there, nervous about being implicated in possible rights abuses.

 

[Sheikh Rauf]

Guess whos's having pain in their tummy. Why dont the world powers bring up whats happening in india with minorities how they kill 50 year old ikhlaq Ahmed for lie over beef.

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

China Uses Charlie Hebdo Attacks for Terror, Free Speech Crackdown | New Republic

China Is Using 'Charlie Hebdo' to Justify Its Own Crackdown on Free Speech
By Matt Schiavenza
January 15, 2015
On January 10, the day 1.5 million people filled Paris's streets in solidarity against the terror attacks in that city, China’s official Xinhua news service published a self-serving editorial arguing that France’s free-wheeling media abetted the attack.

“The world is diverse and there should be limits on press freedom,” read the editorial by Paris bureau chief Ying Qiang. “Unfettered and unprincipled satire, humiliation, and free speech are not acceptable.”

Such a remark is par for the course for China’s state media, which rarely miss an opportunity, no matter how distasteful, to trumpet the Communist Party line. But, pointedly, the Paris attacks on the satirical Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket resonated with recent events in China. Over the past year, clashes between China’s majority Han and its ethnic Uighur population have escalated. On Monday, a government website located in Xinjiang reported that police killed six Uighur men who had attacked them with axes. And in September, following explosions that killed six police in Xinjiang, an ensuing riot led to police killing 40 people. Most spectacularly, masked militants armed with swords and knives entered a train station in Kunming, a regional capital in southwest China, and stabbed 30 people to death.

The perpetrators of the Paris attacks were French-born of Islamic origin, part of the country’s five-million-strong Muslims who have struggled to assimilate into French society while maintaining their cultural heritage. The French government famously restricts when and where French women can wear headscarves, a regulation that critics claim robs the country’s minority population of their identity. Likewise, the Chinese government has imposed similar restrictions on Islamic dress among its Uighur population, most recently by banning full-length burqas in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital city. The ban followed a similar restriction imposed in Karamay, a smaller Xinjiang city, that forbids religious wear on public transportation.

But China's repression of its Uighur population goes well beyond similar French measures. Officials in Xinjiang have placed the Chinese flag inside mosques throughout the region, and have restricted many faithful (including children under the age of 18) from entering mosques at all. The Chinese government has also clamped down on bilingual education in the region, placing Uighur people—for whom Mandarin is not a first language—at a competitive disadvantage. “A lot of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, as in Tibet, feel that the Chinese government is practicing a form of cultural genocide,” said Julia Famularo, an expert in the region at Project 2049, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

The Chinese government’s strategy in Xinjiang is driven by economic strategy. Alaska-sized and bordering eight sovereign states, Xinjiang is vital to China’s burgeoning relationship with the countries to its west, with whom Beijing has signed long-term energy contracts. To spur the domestic economy, China has invested billions in fixed-asset infrastructure throughout the region, including a high-speed train linking Urumqi to Lanzhou, a regional capital to the east.

These investments have brought considerable wealth to Xinjiang. But China’s Uighurs insist that they’re largely shut out. Once the majority ethnicity in Xinjiang, the Uighur share of the population has dropped steadily since 1950, when Mao and the People’s Liberation Army incorporated the territory into the fledgling People’s Republic. In Urumqi, a city of 3 million people, just 10 percent are Uighur. The rest, mainly internal migrants from China’s Han majority, completely dominate the city’s government, economy, and security forces. And as in Paris, whose Muslim population resides primarily in banlieues on the outskirts of the cities, China’s Uighur and Han populations are highly segregated.

The result is cultural and economic isolation for the Uighurs. With increasing frequency, they have turned to terrorist violence. The Chinese government has long blamed outside extremist groups, including a shadowy organization called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) that Beijing claims gets money and support from militants based in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Given the absence of reliable coverage of the region, assessing the influence of groups like ETIM—whose very existence has been questioned—is difficult. “There are definitely organized groups tied to the wider Islamist ideology,” said James Palmer, a Beijing-based writer who has studied the region extensively. “But there’s a large dose of local nationalism.” The combination has fed radical ideas in the region. Palmer added: “Uighur videos online are increasingly using jihadist terms."

On this point, China's state media is correct: China’s Uighurs and France’s Muslims differ in their access to free speech. Even by Chinese standards, the situation in Xinjiang, where foreign journalists are often barred from visiting, is especially severe. “In France, there are plenty of mechanisms by which Muslims can express themselves in public,” says Famularo. “In China there aren’t.” After large-scale riots in Urumqi claimed almost 200 lives in 2009, China shut off Internet access throughout the region for six months.

France’s protection of free speech—epitomized by Charlie Hebdo's audacity—has exacerbated tensions among varying ethnic groups there. Yet the country’s openness also allows marginalized communities to have a voice. Just don't expect China's state media to acknowledge the point.

 

[$@rJen]

Guess whos's having pain in their tummy. Why dont the world powers bring up whats happening in india with minorities how they kill 50 year old ikhlaq Ahmed for lie over beef.

Inside the Indian village where a mob killed a man for eating beef | World news | The Guardian

An Indian Mob Kills a Muslim Man Suspected of Eating Beef - The Atlantic

A mob in India just dragged a man from his home and beat him to death — for eating beef - The Washington Post

Indian man lynched over beef rumours - BBC News

Now do tell me why does pakistanis doesn't object the killings of muslims by chinese but they love to scream at India, France , Myanmar ect???

 

[KN-1]

Well done China, hunt all terrorist who make mischief in China wither Muslim, Hindu or another doesn't matter... we are doing same in Pakistan..

scream at India, France , Myanmar ect???

Only India...

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

UNPO: East Turkestan: China Using Terrorism As Excuse

East Turkestan: China Using Terrorism As Excuse
Since September 11th, Beijing has used the ‘war on terror’ as an opportunity to crack down on dissent in East Turkestan, arresting activists and intimidating their families.
Since September 11th, Beijing has used the "war on terror" as an opportunity to crack down on dissent in East Turkestan, arresting activists and intimidating their families.

Below is a press release issued by the Uyghur Human Rights Project:

As the leaders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) meet this week in Beijing for the 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress, the Uyghur American Association urges them to take some time to address the dire situation created by their policies in East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or XUAR). In the five years since the last Party Congress, the PRC has continued to commit human rights abuses in the region. An area of particular concern is the government’s use of the concept of “terrorism” as a justification for its repressive treatment of Uyghurs in East Turkestan and as a tool to intimidate Uyghurs who have fled the PRC.

A new Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) report, Political Persecution of Uyghurs in the Era of the “War on Terror,” examines this domestic and international campaign against the Uyghur people. This report documents that the PRC government has:

1. Placed tremendous emphasis on the threat of “terrorism” in East Turkestan, without providing credible evidence of a threat.

2. Initiated a series of “security” campaigns in East Turkestan that have resulted in serious human rights abuses.

3. Used its influence within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to seek the return of Uyghurs from China’s neighboring countries in violation of international law.

4. Attempted to influence overseas Uyghur activists by harassing their family members who remain in East Turkestan.

UHRP’s report reviews the PRC’s change in public rhetoric about East Turkestan after 9/11 and details the crackdowns that have led to arbitrary detentions, arrests, and executions, as the PRC government has used “anti-terrorism” policies to suppress all forms of Uyghur protest, no matter how peaceful. A section of the report illuminates how authorities have targeted Uyghur intellectuals as part of their strategy to silence dissent. The cases of Uyghur-Canadian Huseyin Celil and the attacks on prominent Uyghur leader and human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer’s family illustrate how the PRC’s intimidation tactics extend beyond its own borders.

“Despite the challenges that we face as a people, Uyghurs have never given up longing for freedom and democracy in East Turkestan,” said Ms. Kadeer. “The PRC government must stop misusing the ‘war on terror’ to persecute Uyghurs. It should know that true peace and stability can only come from equality and freedom. Protecting human rights, encouraging the spread of democracy, and building a better world are the responsibility of all nations.”

The report can be downloaded at http://uhrp.org/docs/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_the_Era_of_the_War_on_Terror.pdf

 

[Martian2]

Hans will never relent in wiping out Uighur terrorists

In 2009, the Uighurs butchered 140 Han Chinese men, women, and children. You can see the videos on YouTube.

Since that time, the Uighurs have been stabbing and killing more defenseless Han civilians in railway stations and food markets.

The Uighurs are unrepentant and persistent terrorists.

Given the repeated and outrageous slaughter of Han civilians by Uighur terrorists, the Chinese government has the full support of all Hans in their effort to wipe out the Uighur terrorists.

By whatever means necessary and for however long, the Chinese government has all 1.4 billion Hans standing behind them.

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

China Uses Charlie Hebdo Attacks for Terror, Free Speech Crackdown | New Republic

China Is Using 'Charlie Hebdo' to Justify Its Own Crackdown on Free Speech
By Matt Schiavenza
January 15, 2015
On January 10, the day 1.5 million people filled Paris's streets in solidarity against the terror attacks in that city, China’s official Xinhua news service published a self-serving editorial arguing that France’s free-wheeling media abetted the attack.

“The world is diverse and there should be limits on press freedom,” read the editorial by Paris bureau chief Ying Qiang. “Unfettered and unprincipled satire, humiliation, and free speech are not acceptable.”

Such a remark is par for the course for China’s state media, which rarely miss an opportunity, no matter how distasteful, to trumpet the Communist Party line. But, pointedly, the Paris attacks on the satirical Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket resonated with recent events in China. Over the past year, clashes between China’s majority Han and its ethnic Uighur population have escalated. On Monday, a government website located in Xinjiang reported that police killed six Uighur men who had attacked them with axes. And in September, following explosions that killed six police in Xinjiang, an ensuing riot led to police killing 40 people. Most spectacularly, masked militants armed with swords and knives entered a train station in Kunming, a regional capital in southwest China, and stabbed 30 people to death.

The perpetrators of the Paris attacks were French-born of Islamic origin, part of the country’s five-million-strong Muslims who have struggled to assimilate into French society while maintaining their cultural heritage. The French government famously restricts when and where French women can wear headscarves, a regulation that critics claim robs the country’s minority population of their identity. Likewise, the Chinese government has imposed similar restrictions on Islamic dress among its Uighur population, most recently by banning full-length burqas in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital city. The ban followed a similar restriction imposed in Karamay, a smaller Xinjiang city, that forbids religious wear on public transportation.

But China's repression of its Uighur population goes well beyond similar French measures. Officials in Xinjiang have placed the Chinese flag inside mosques throughout the region, and have restricted many faithful (including children under the age of 18) from entering mosques at all. The Chinese government has also clamped down on bilingual education in the region, placing Uighur people—for whom Mandarin is not a first language—at a competitive disadvantage. “A lot of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, as in Tibet, feel that the Chinese government is practicing a form of cultural genocide,” said Julia Famularo, an expert in the region at Project 2049, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

The Chinese government’s strategy in Xinjiang is driven by economic strategy. Alaska-sized and bordering eight sovereign states, Xinjiang is vital to China’s burgeoning relationship with the countries to its west, with whom Beijing has signed long-term energy contracts. To spur the domestic economy, China has invested billions in fixed-asset infrastructure throughout the region, including a high-speed train linking Urumqi to Lanzhou, a regional capital to the east.

These investments have brought considerable wealth to Xinjiang. But China’s Uighurs insist that they’re largely shut out. Once the majority ethnicity in Xinjiang, the Uighur share of the population has dropped steadily since 1950, when Mao and the People’s Liberation Army incorporated the territory into the fledgling People’s Republic. In Urumqi, a city of 3 million people, just 10 percent are Uighur. The rest, mainly internal migrants from China’s Han majority, completely dominate the city’s government, economy, and security forces. And as in Paris, whose Muslim population resides primarily in banlieues on the outskirts of the cities, China’s Uighur and Han populations are highly segregated.

The result is cultural and economic isolation for the Uighurs. With increasing frequency, they have turned to terrorist violence. The Chinese government has long blamed outside extremist groups, including a shadowy organization called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) that Beijing claims gets money and support from militants based in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Given the absence of reliable coverage of the region, assessing the influence of groups like ETIM—whose very existence has been questioned—is difficult. “There are definitely organized groups tied to the wider Islamist ideology,” said James Palmer, a Beijing-based writer who has studied the region extensively. “But there’s a large dose of local nationalism.” The combination has fed radical ideas in the region. Palmer added: “Uighur videos online are increasingly using jihadist terms."

On this point, China's state media is correct: China’s Uighurs and France’s Muslims differ in their access to free speech. Even by Chinese standards, the situation in Xinjiang, where foreign journalists are often barred from visiting, is especially severe. “In France, there are plenty of mechanisms by which Muslims can express themselves in public,” says Famularo. “In China there aren’t.” After large-scale riots in Urumqi claimed almost 200 lives in 2009, China shut off Internet access throughout the region for six months.

France’s protection of free speech—epitomized by Charlie Hebdo's audacity—has exacerbated tensions among varying ethnic groups there. Yet the country’s openness also allows marginalized communities to have a voice. Just don't expect China's state media to acknowledge the point.

 

[Martian2]

You (Arsalan Kan) are a terrorist apologist.

I can see that you're a terrorist in training.
----------

Here are the latest Uighur attacks on defenseless Han civilians. Another 50 dead Hans in October 2015 due to Uighur murderers.

Fifty killed in a knife attack at a Chinese colliery | MINING.com

 

[PWFI]

Uyghurs (CIA jihadists) funded terrorists should be eliminated at any cost, everybody know the main plan is to sabotage CPEC.

 

[KingWest]

Hans will never relent in wiping out Uighur terrorists

The Uighurs are unrepentant and persistent terrorists.

How racist can you be? Claiming all Uighurs are terrorists?ç

Given the repeated and outrageous slaughter of Han civilians by Uighur terrorists, the Chinese government has the full support of all Hans in their effort to wipe out the Uighur terrorists.

.

So first you claim all Uighurs are terrorists, than you say that the government can whipe all Uiygurs out because the majority of the country (ethnic Hans) want them to die?
Yet, you wonder why those people attack ethnic Hans in their lands?
Uighurs being discriminated in their own land, robbed from the riches their land has to offer ,.. Apperantly Hans want to kil them all, and you are wondering why they fight back.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

She is Turkish-French.

 

[Martian2]

How racist can you be? Claiming all Uighurs are terrorists?ç

So first you claim all Uighurs are terrorists, than you say that the government can whipe all Uiygurs out because the majority of the country (ethnic Hans) want them to die?
Yet, you wonder why those people attack ethnic Hans in their lands?
Uighurs being discriminated in their own land, robbed from the riches their land has to offer ,.. Apperantly Hans want to kil them all, and you are wondering why they fight back.

Thousands of Uighurs participated in the cold-blooded murder of Hans in 2009. That means Uighur society is full of terrorists. You can excuse a handful of criminals. You can't excuse thousands of Uighur murderers and terrorists.

Also, Xinjiang has been Chinese territory for 2,075 years. The Western Han Dynasty ruled Xinjiang in 60 BCE (ie. Before Current Era). The Uighurs did not arrive for another 1,000 years. Xinjiang has always been Chinese land.

Xinjiang | autonomous region, China | Britannica.com

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

China Expels French Reporter Who Questioned Terrorism

China Expels French Reporter Who Questioned Terrorism


French journalist Ursula Gauthier, a reporter for the French news magazine L'Obs, holds a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as she sits at her desk in her apartment in Beijing, Dec. 26, 2015.
Associated Press
December 27, 2015 8:48 AM

BEIJING—
China said Saturday that it will not renew press credentials for a French journalist, effectively expelling her following a harsh media campaign against her for questioning the official line equating ethnic violence in China's western Muslim region with global terrorism.

Expecting the move, Ursula Gauthier, a longtime journalist for the French news magazine L'Obs, said late Friday night that she was prepared to leave China.

Once she departs on Dec. 31, she will become the first foreign journalist forced to leave China since 2012, when American Melissa Chan, then working for Al Jazeera in Beijing, was expelled.

"They want a public apology for things that I have not written,'' Gauthier said. "They are accusing me of writing things that I have not written.''

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that Gauthier was no longer "suitable'' to be allowed to work in China because she had supported "terrorism and cruel acts'' that killed civilians and refused to apologize for her words.

"China has always protected the legal rights of foreign media and foreign correspondents to report within the country, but China does not tolerate the freedom to embolden terrorism,'' Lu said in a statement.

Gauthier on Saturday called the accusations "absurd,'' and said that emboldening terrorism is morally and legally wrong. She said that she should be prosecuted if that were the case.

"All this is rhetoric,'' Gauthier said. "It's only meant to deter foreign correspondents in the future in Beijing.''

In a statement Friday, the French foreign ministry said: "We regret that the visa of Madame Ursula Gauthier was not renewed. France recalls the importance of the role journalists play throughout the world.''

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said the accusation that Gauthier supports terrorism "is a particularly egregious personal and professional affront with no basis in fact.'' It said it was "appalled'' by the decision, and expressed concerns that Beijing was using the accreditation and visa process to threaten foreign journalists.

"The FCCC views this matter as a most serious development and a grave threat to the ability of foreign correspondents to work in China,'' it said in a statement.

The fallout began with Gauthier's Nov. 18 article, shortly after the attacks in Paris. She wrote that Beijing's proclaimed solidarity with Paris is not without ulterior motives, as Beijing seeks international support for its assertion that the ethnic violence in its Muslim region of Xinjiang is part of global terrorism.

Gauthier wrote that some of the violent attacks in Xinjiang involving members of the minority Uighur community appeared to be homegrown, with no evidence of foreign ties - an observation that has been made by numerous foreign experts on security and on Xinjiang's ethnic policies and practices.

Advocacy groups have argued that the violence is more likely to be a response to Beijing's suppressive policies in Xinjiang.

Beijing blames the violence on terrorism with foreign ties. Amid a counterterrorism campaign, a Xinjiang court last year sentenced a Uighur scholar critical of China's ethnic policies in Xinjiang to life in prison. This month, a Beijing court convicted a prominent lawyer of fanning ethnic hatred based on his comments that Beijing should rethink its Xinjiang policies.

In her article, Gauthier focused on a deadly mine attack in a remote region of Xinjiang, which she described as more likely an act by Uighurs against mine workers of the majority Han ethnic group over what the Uighurs perceived as mistreatment, injustice and exploitation.

The article quickly drew stern criticism from state media and China's government.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized Western media for using double standards in reporting on the violence.

"Why is terrorism in other countries called terrorist actions, but it turns out to be ethnic and religious issues in China?'' ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing on Dec. 2.

By then, state media had launched an abusive and intimidating campaign against Gauthier, accusing her of having deep prejudice against China and having hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

On Friday, Gauthier said that the Foreign Ministry demanded her to apologize for "hurting Chinese people's feelings with wrong and hateful actions and words,'' and to publicly state that she recognizes that there have been terrorist attacks in and outside Xinjiang.

She said she was also asked to distance herself from any support group that presents her case as infringement of press freedom in China.