The provincial prosecutors' office in Northwest China's Gansu Province has dispatched a work group to Wuwei to investigate the detention of three local reporters on the charge of blackmailing government officials, the People's Procuratorate of Gansu announced on its official Sina Weibo on Sunday.
The procuratorate said it would release the result of its investigation promptly. The local government in Wuwei, at the same time, said it has established a 24-hour hotline to answer any questions about the case.
Three reporters were detained earlier this month. The district prosecutors' office in Liangzhou district, Wuwei announced on January 25 that one reporter had been officially arrested, one was being indicted and the third out on bail.
The case began to draw public attention nationwide after an open letter under the name of the Lanzhou Morning Post, the employer of the arrested reporter, began to circulate online.
The letter listed five doubtful points in police's detention of its reporter Zhang Yongsheng, who was detained on January 7 on the charge of blackmailing the local government in joint interviews with two other journalists from the Lanzhou Evening News and the Western Economic Daily. It stated that the paper was happy to cooperate and had no intention of blocking the investigation.
The letter also questioned the reasons for detention, saying that police first said Zhang was detained on suspicion of using prostitutes on January 7, and then the charge was changed to "blackmailing" on January 14.
Zhang had been previously threatened over negative reports. Officials in the Liangzhou district public security bureau called him twice asking him to remove negative reports and threatened him over the phone after he turned them down, according to the letter.
The Lanzhou Morning Post denied on Friday that it had published the open letter. But several media outlets reported on Thursday and Friday that they had confirmation from different sources that the newspaper did publish the letter.
