Canadian Content Changed by Chinese
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC):
In 1992 a new spiritual practice, called Falun Gong, began to spread throughout China and by 1999 had acquired over 70 million adherents. Fearing the popular practice, the Chinese government banned Falun Gong in 1999 and began harassing and jailing practitioners. To date, over 200,000 have been sent to Chinese jails and forced labour camps, many of them brutally tortured, and at least 2,500 killed.
In 2006, new reports have come from China alleging that thousands of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners have had their corneas, kidneys and livers forcibly removed for sale by Chinese authorities.
“Beyond the Red Wall” is a hard-hitting documentary special focusing on the movement and the persecution of these people by the Chinese authorities. It focuses on two Falun Gong practitioners – an internationally renowned painter, a Canadian citizen and resident of New York who was jailed and tortured for his beliefs, and a typically North American housewife who actively participates in and fights for Falun Gong.
The film also includes never-seen-before torture footage, smuggled out of China.
The Chinese government was quick to blame Falun Gong when one of the SinoSat satellite’s transponders was overpowered by a pirate signal in 2002. Then again in 2004 and 2005, both on an AsiaSat satellite. Falun Gong denied it, arguing they lacked the tech know-how. Was it poor satcom management? Without a sophisticated transponder locator service, I don’t see how they could quickly triangulate and concluded it came from Taiwan. Considering CITIC Group is a major AsiaSat shareholder, I’m not surprised.
Now we read in The Globe and Mail of a new episdoe in this ongoing saga:
CBC pulls Falun Gong documentary
Network postpones repeat of film aired in the spring after Chinese diplomats raise concerns
by COLIN FREEZE
November 8, 2007
CBC Television abruptly cancelled a featured Falun Gong documentary just hours before it was to air on Tuesday night, prompting complaints that the network bowed to pressure from Chinese government officials.
The network, which had actually already broadcast the documentary once in English and once on its sister French service, Radio-Canada, switched the program at the 11th hour to rerun a piece about Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf.
A CBC spokesman said the network is simply doing its "due diligence" in holding Beyond The Red Wall: The Story of Falun Gong for prime time, in order to make it "more solid" before airing it at an unspecified date.
"If there is re-editing that’s required, we’re going to do that," CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said. He confirmed the network had been talking with Chinese diplomats who had expressed concerns about promotions the CBC had aired in the runup to this week’s broadcast.
"I was actually contacted myself by a gentleman who is a cultural consultant with the Chinese embassy," Mr. Keay said. "He was very polite." CBC will run a new version of the documentary "sooner rather than later," the spokesman added, but couldn’t say precisely when.
The Canadian director of Beyond The Red Wall says he has no intention of re-editing a piece that he spent three years working on. "We have to quote-unquote give balance," veteran filmmaker Peter Rowe said in an interview. "… I’ve never experienced anything like these kinds of demands."
The Falun Gong and Beijing are locked in a global campaign against one another. Falun Gong members said they interpret the delayed documentary as the latest example of China-sponsored interference against their movement, which Beijing considers a cult that represents a security threat.
The documentary draws attention to Falun Gong practitioners’ complaints of persecution, including beatings, torture and labour camps in China.
It also explores an investigative report done by the former Canadian MP David Kilgour and Canadian civil-liberties lawyer David Matas, who concluded last year that a "large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience" were being executed and their hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas harvested for transplant.
Beyond The Red Wall was to air on The Lens, which CBC Newsworld bills as a forum for Canadian filmmakers whose "up close and personal documentaries feature dramatic stories with new perspectives; films that inform, provoke and entertain."
Parts of the documentary, however, may have been too provocative for the CBC. At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Mr. Rowe said, he spoke to CBC documentary chief Catherine Olsen, who said the piece would not air during its scheduled 10 p.m. time slot. He said the specific concerns that were raised by Ms. Olsen included explorations of self-immolations in Tiananmen Square that China and the Falun Gong accuse each other of sponsoring.
Another contentious portion was the way the documentary explores the controversial organ-harvesting report.
The Falun Gong-supporting Epoch Times newspaper featured an interview with Mr. Rowe last week in anticipation of the piece. At the time, he lauded the CBC for broadcasting the controversial documentary, especially given the network’s ties to the Olympics in Beijing.
"The fact that they’re willing to broadcast a film that has people in it advocating the boycotting of the Olympics, which they themselves are the broadcaster of in Canada, is remarkable," he told the newspaper on Oct. 29.
What’s most galling for Mr. Rowe is that English CBC already aired the film this spring, albeit in a 4 a.m. time slot.
Radio-Canada aired a French-dubbed version of the film last month, Mr. Rowe said, adding that broadcasters in Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and New Zealand are airing Beyond the Red Wall unedited. He pointed out that CBC had sponsored the project throughout. "Without their funding, the rest of the funding would not have come in," he said.
Prompting this blog post by Clive Ansley:
Human rights advocates the world over lament the Beijing government’s consistent suppression of accurate news reports in China, and its determination to ensure that Chinese citizens never receive fair and accurate information about Falun Gong. Now it is apparent that Beijing has the power to approve or disapprove what is broadcast by news services in democratic countries. CBC is apparently quite comfortable with the idea that what Canadians are allowed to see or hear should be determined by the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.
Even the New York Times picked up on the story.
