Munro's Fate

Peking expels a reporter

In two and a half years as the Toronto Globe and Mail's man in Peking, Ross H. Munro has been reprimanded by Chinese officials, described to visiting journalists as a troublemaker and pointedly excluded from press trips around the country. That was even before he wrote a candid and widely reprinted series on human rights in China, or rather the absence thereof. Now Munro has received the ultimate rebuke: Chinese officials have informed the Globe and Mail that "for obvious reasons" Munro's visa, due to expire Dec. 23, will not be renewed, and he will have to leave Peking by that date. Munro becomes, in effect, the first journalist to be expelled from China in more than a decade.

Munro had been scheduled to leave the country by mid-January anyway; his replacement, former Drama Critic John Fraser, has already left for Peking. The Chinese clearly meant the expulsion as a warning to the 38 other foreign journalists there. Says Munro: "This raises a very serious question about whether reporters in China can write professionally, accurately and fully about this country." -

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