Reporter confined by county official

An official with the land and resources bureau of Nanpi county in Hebei province confined a journalist who was investigating a land-seizure case.

The reporter was released unharmed after six hours, and the incident is under investigation.

Xue Wenyuan, the bureau's office director, spoke and behaved inappropriately to a journalist from China Newsweek, according to documents delivered to the magazine by the bureau on Dec 27.

The decision to investigate Xue was made on the evening of Dec 26, after the land and resources office in Cangzhou city, which oversees the county bureau, formally requested an investigation into the case.

The announcement came several hours after China Newsweek said on its micro blog that its reporter was detained by Xue while looking into an illegal land-seizure case in the county. The micro blog post was forwarded more than 61,000 times within hours.

Xu Zhihui, 35, the reporter whom Xue confined, told China Daily on Dec 27 that he was held for nearly six hours.

Xu said he had been followed by two men since Dec 25 while he was covering the story at the Nanpi county countryside.

The two men invited him on the morning of Dec 26 to visit the office of Nanpi county's land and resources bureau, promising to explain the land-seizure case to him and provide him with detailed data, the reporter said.

However, after Xu followed them to the bureau's office, he did not get any information about the case. Instead, Xue, the office director, gave him 10,000 yuan ($1,600) in cash and begged him to stop reporting on it.

Xu said that he refused to accept the money and was ready to leave the official's office, but was stopped by two men who said that he must take the money and agree to stop reporting the story.

Unable to leave the office, Xu tried to persuade the official to let him go. During that time, he was tightly monitored.

"Even when I went to the bathroom, there were two men standing on both sides of me," he said.

About an hour later, Xue and several other officials took the reporter to lunch and tried to persuade him to drink liquor.

"I think they were trying to get me drunk and to misbehave, so I kept a clear mind and had only a little liquor out of politeness," the reporter said. "The two officials shared two bottles of liquor."

After lunch, Xue offered more money — 20,000 yuan — which Xu refused.

"I closely watched my bag in case they put the money in it," he said.