China had the dubious distinction of being the jailor of most number of journalists, along with Iran, in 2010 due mainly to a spate of jail terms for ethnic minority writers, said New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in its annual report released 15. The report said a total of 34 journalists each remained in Chinese and Iranian prisons on Dec 1. For China, this was 10 more than in 2009.

“The increase was propelled by a series of imprisonments of Uyghur and Tibetan journalists that began in the latter half of 2009 and continued into 2010, the details of which have emerged only recently in accounts of their court proceedings,” the group said on its website. It said these journalists were handed jail terms after they addressed ethnic tensions amid violent regional unrest in recent years, “topics that are officially off-limits”.

The report, “Attacks on the Press 2010,” said Beijing was continuing to crack down on ethnic minority press and jailing Uyghur and Tibetan journalists in the wake of ethnic unrests there in 2008 and 2009.

The report noted that mainstream journalists in China were speaking out more often to protest attacks, harassment, and arrests. It added, however, that both news coverage and the expression of press rights still remained subjected to severe constraints.

The report accuses China’s propaganda department of continuing to bar direct challenges to central authority or the Communist Party, along with independent coverage of sensitive national topics.

The group says the internet continued to be a major focus of censorship and repression. It said more than half of the journalists currently imprisoned in China had conducted their work online, either as independent writers or as editors of Internet news sites.