To keep you all updated on Tom’s sad story (OK, more sad even for the Henan government), see here a second article I found on the South China Morning Post (the first one was also from AP):
3 December 2008 – Probe into beating of Belgian journalists
Associated Press in Beijing – SCMP
Authorities are investigating an attack in Henan province in which assailants allegedly pulled a Belgian television crew from their vehicle, beat them and took their notes and money, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
The attack last Thursday came just a little more than a month after Beijing announced that relaxed reporting regulations for foreign media put in place for the Olympics would become permanent. Journalists are now supposed to be able to travel and report freely in most parts of the mainland, but certain topics remain touchy, especially with local officials.
“Eight thugs pulled their van over, reached inside to unlock the doors, dragged the crew out to the road and punched them into submission,” according to an account of the attack circulated by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China. It was the second time the crew had been stopped that day, the report said.
Such attacks are often believed to be carried out on orders from local officials seeking to suppress negative reporting in their areas.
The two-person crew from Flemish-language public broadcaster VRT, accompanied by an assistant, was reporting on HIV/Aids sufferers in the central province for World Aids Day, which was on Monday.
Henan has been highly sensitive to the Aids issue since the HIV virus spread widely there in the 1990s through unhygienic blood-buying rings, which allegedly operated with official protection. Officials there have been accused of abusing Aids sufferers and advocates.
Last week’s attack has drawn protests from the International Federation of Journalists and from Belgian authorities. The Belgian ambassador to China was scheduled to meet a vice-foreign minister to discuss the incident yesterday, one of the journalists who was attacked said.
An official from the Foreign Ministry spokesman’s office said the “relevant department” in Henan was investigating.
However, the head of the publicity department of Henan’s Public Security Bureau – who would give only his surname, Li – said officials there were not aware of the case.
VRT journalist Tom Van de Weghe said he had not heard of an investigation. “There have been no results” of the complaints made over the case, he said.