Wall Street Journal: Journal's Johnson, Rabinowitz Win Pulitzers for Falun Gong, Editorials (excerpt)

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

April 17, 2001

NEW YORK -- The Wall Street Journal won two Pulitzer Prizes, journalism's highest honor, for its coverage of the Falun Gong [...] movement in China and for editorial commentary.

Ian Johnson, 38 years old, won a prize for international reporting with a series of stories about the rise of the Falun Gong faith and how it was repressed by the Chinese government.

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Mr. Johnson joined The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., in 1997 as a reporter in the Beijing bureau, where he became deputy bureau chief in 1999. The central article in his coverage of the Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was an April 20, 2000, piece titled "A Deadly Exercise," which told of Chinese security officials torturing and killing Chen Zixiu, an auto-parts company retiree and adherent of the Falun Gong faith. Mr. Johnson followed up with other articles about the work of an underground Falun Gong activist and a piece on the fruitless six-month effort by Ms. Chen's daughter to force police to release her mother's death certificate. He also looked at the critics of the movement.

"It was a tremendous example of courage and determination to get a story in the face of strong police pressures against the reporting, combined with very sensitive and powerful writing," said Paul E. Steiger, managing editor of the Journal.

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Nominated Articles by Ian Johnson

How One Chinese City Resorted to Atrocities to Control Falun Dafa (Dec. 26, 2000)

China's Rigid Tack on Religion Helped Falun Dafa Flourish (Dec. 13, 2000)

U.N. Backed Conference in Beijing on '[Chinese government's slanderous words omitted]' (Nov. 22, 2000)

Falun Dafa Members File Suit Over Crackdown Against Group (Oct. 9. 2000)

China's Bureaucracy Stymies a Daughter in Search of Justice (Oct. 2, 2000)

Beepers and Faith Are What's Keeping Falun Dafa Alive (Aug. 25, 2000)

U.N. Panel Faults China for Policies Leading to Torture (May 10, 2000)

Beijing Denies It Tortured Believer in Falun Dafa (May 8, 2000)

Defiant Falun Dafa Members Converge on Tiananmen (April 25, 2000)

Ms. Chen Believed in Falun Dafa to Her Last Day (April 20, 2000)

[...]