Chinese journalist banned from flying to US to accept a prize for his work; Guardian, 2/15/16

Tom Phillips, Guardian; Chinese journalist banned from flying to US to accept a prize for his work:

"Since Xi Jinping came to power in late 2012 academics, journalists, authors, lawyers and activists have all complained of increasing pressure from authorities.

Experts say many talented young Chinese journalists are abandoning the profession, partly because of their frustration at intensifying censorship.

Historians meanwhile complain that securing access to government archives containing material about sensitive periods such as the Great Famine has become increasingly difficult.

In the introduction to the English edition of his book, Yang said his 15-year inquiry into the famine was an attempt to expose how a totalitarian system had attempted to forcibly eradicate all memory of the disaster.

“A tombstone is memory made concrete. Human memory is the ladder on which a country and a people advance,” he wrote. “I erect this tombstone so that people will remember and henceforth renounce man-made calamity, darkness and evil.”"