BEIJING: A French reporter forced to leave China after she criticised government policy in violence-wracked, mainly Muslim Xinjiang, warned of dark days to come for journalists working in the country ahead of her departure on Thursday.

Beijing accused Ursula Gauthier, the China correspondent for France’s L’Obs news magazine, of supporting terrorism after she wrote an article questioning official comparisons between global Islamist violence and the unrest in the homeland of the Uighur ethnic minority.

It then refused to renew her credentials, obliging her to leave when her visa expires.

Speaking from her Beijing home before leaving for the airport, Gauthier said that the future looked bleak for journalists in China.

“What happened with this small article about Xinjiang could happen with anything else,” she said.

“This could be really dangerous in the future.” France and Europe should be “concerned about what is going on here, not because it is a journalist, not only because of the freedom of press, but also because it is about China and what China is doing to its minorities, and even its majority, the problem is the same,” she added.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2016