China said on Friday it had removed the BBC World television news channel from its airwaves for ”infringing” broadcast rules, a move the corporation said was linked to a report on the banned Falungong spiritual movement.
The British Broadcasting Corporation announced from London that Chinese authorities switched off the channel’s encrypted signal through the Sinosat 1 satellite earlier this week.
”The transmission of BBC World has been suspended by the Chinese authorities since Monday following an item on the Falungong that appeared on the station,” a station representative said.
A representative for the China International Television Corporation, the state-run body responsible for the import and export of programmes to the country, confirmed the signal had been switched off.
”Yes, it’s true, the reason is that some programmes of the BBC infringed rules on the transmission of foreign programmes in China,” he said, declining to say what had caused the offence. The representative said he did not know when or if the signal would be restored.
China’s supreme authority on broadcasting matters, the State Administration of Radio, Television and Film, professed ignorance of the affair.
”We have not heard about it,” a representative said.
The BBC representative said the offending item had run repeatedly on the channel’s hourly news bulletin over Sunday and Monday as part of its fifth anniversary coverage of Hong Kong’s return to China.
BBC World — which is only available at upmarket hotels and a small number of foreigners’ residence compounds in China ? could still be viewed in Asia via PanAmSat 2, 8 and 10, she said.
The corporation was in discussions with Chinese authorities in a bid to clear up the problem, the representative said, adding that the BBC was also unaware of what part of the report had caused offence.
Falungong, which mixes Buddhist and Taoists beliefs with breathing and meditation exercises, is outlawed in China as an ”evil cult”, although it is still permitted in Hong Kong.
Rights groups say tens of thousands of Falungong adherents have been jailed or sent to labour camps in recent years, while the group alleges that hundreds of followers have died in custody, mostly from beatings and maltreatment.
China and the BBC have long endured a difficult relationship, going back to 1989 when Beijing was angered at the corporation’s coverage of the bloody crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
In 1994, the BBC was removed from Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV satellite, which at the time beamed the corporation into China, in an attempt by the media tycoon to appease Beijing and advance his business interests in China.
The current license bringing the BBC into the country was granted by the China International Television Corporation in January 2001, marking a thaw in relations.
It allows the channel to be seen in around 60 000 three to five-star hotel rooms. – Sapa-AFP