China apologises for Roughing up Journalists days before the Olympic Games

  "The local foreign affairs department made an apology Tuesday to two Japanese reporters," Xinhua said. A photographer for the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper was forcibly detained late Monday and kicked by police in the city of Kashgar, his employer said.

A reporter for the Nippon Television Network was also detained and treated roughly by Chinese police who pushed his face to the ground, the network said. "We are planning to make a strong protest," Japanese government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told reporters. Kashgar police also entered an AFP photographer's hotel room and forced him to delete photos he had taken of the scene of the attack. "We strongly protest against the violent detention of a reporter who was reporting by fair means," the Tokyo Shimbun said in a statement. Its photographer Masami Kawakita, 38, said he was taking photos at the scene when he was grabbed by paramilitary policy and carried into a government facility nearby.

Police at one point held him to the ground, placing a foot on his face pinning his head to the ground, and also kicked him once, before he was released after two hours, he said. "I don't speak Chinese so I couldn't understand what they were doing or saying. They just made me sit there. I could not make a phone call, it was unbelievable," he said.