China to Expel French Journalist

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the country will expel a French journalist who wrote an article criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority group. The Chinese government said that a Nov 18. article written by Ursula Gauthier, a reporter for the French newsweekly L’Obs, was sympathetic to terrorism. “China has consistently safeguarded the legal right of foreign news organizations and foreign correspondents to report in the country,” a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said. “But it absolutely does not tolerate the freedom to embolden terrorism.” Gauthier’s article argued that Chinese government’s comparison of the Paris attacks to some Muslim Uighurs’ violent actions in the Xinjiang province was a bad one, saying the two had “nothing in common” and that the Uighurs’ violence was caused by the Chinese government’s hard-line policies toward the group.