Philadelphia Inquirer: China's Clash With Reporters Reverberates Here (Excerpt)
Feb. 16, 2004 By Gaiutra Bahadur In China, behind what has been called the "Bamboo Curtain," the
government has banned satellite dishes in the countryside, one chapter in its
[persecution of] the Falun Gong spiritual movement and on independent media. Some believe that another chapter might be unfolding on American soil through
skirmishes involving a global satellite TV station critical of the Chinese
government and powered by volunteer reporters, some of them followers of Falun
Gong. The TV station says its reporters are being shut out of events by pro-China
groups. [...] A reporter in the Philadelphia bureau of New Tang Dynasty TV alleges she was
booted from a Chinese consulate-backed New Year's gala at the University of
Pennsylvania because she practices Falun Gong [...]. "I was kicked out of a public event organized by the City of
Philadelphia," Lily Sun said. "I'm not in China. The Liberty Bell is
here. America was founded here." Sun planned to cover the Jan. 30 gala - cosponsored by the city's Commerce
Department - as a prelude to an event that is scheduled to bring 400 Chinese
companies to the Convention Center in 2005 to foster trade, cultural and
business ties between Philadelphia and China. During a pause in a performance by the Yunnan Provincial Opera and Dance
Theater, however, the president of a pro-China group told Sun that she had to
leave. The head of the Global Chinese Alliance for the Unification of China, Temple
University math professor John Chen, had tried to block Sun and her cameraman at
the event entrance. "Who invited you here?" he asked. The city, Sun replied. She produced her press pass for New Tang, a
Manhattan-based station that has reported on the Chinese government's
persecution of Falun Gong and on its cover-up of the SARS epidemic. The city's communications director, Barbara Grant, had lunch with Sun last
week and urged her to file a complaint with the city's Human Relations
Commission. She defended the reporter's right to cover the event. "We were very sorry she might have been mistreated at an event the city
was involved with," Grant said. "We're a free-media country, and
discrimination of any type is not to be tolerated." [...] The clash between Chen and Sun was a replay of incidents in Philadelphia and
elsewhere in the last year. Two New Tang reporters said they were barred in August from covering a SARS
benefit concert in Massachusetts attended by a Chinese diplomat. The station
said Chinese officials blocked another reporter from covering Premier Wen
Jiabao's visit to the White House in December. "This is a pattern," said Frank Xie, another Philadelphia reporter
for New Tang, adding that China's policy of controlling the media "has kind
of been exported overseas." In the last year, Sun said, a New Tang cameraman was blocked from two
Philadelphia events attended by the Chinese consul general in New York, Liu
Biwei. The station's crew was almost evicted by Chen at Mayor Street's inaugural
ball, she said. [...] The movement's leader, a former grain bureau clerk named Li Hongzhi, accused
Beijing of imprisoning and killing hundreds of his followers in a rare televised
appearance on New Tang. Carrie Hung, a spokeswoman for the 24-hour TV station, said it is entirely
independent of Falun Gong. "The Chinese government is trying to link us with the Falun Gong because
of our courage," she said. "We believe if we don't report on this
movement it's the same as not reporting on the Martin Luther King or Gandhi
movements." The station, started in 2002, runs about 50 news bureaus worldwide, half in
the United States. It aims to be "the Chinese PBS," Hung said, with a
staple of news, English classes, cultural variety and children's shows in
Mandarin and Cantonese. Locally, WYBE-TV (Channel 35) airs one hour of that news
every evening at 5:30. The entire range of programming is available by satellite
to subscribers. The station claims 50 million viewers worldwide, including some in China who
have stashed tiny satellite dishes called "little ears" inside their
homes and have bought decoders to unscramble New Tang's satellite signals,
encrypted by Beijing. But according to China experts, Beijing's censoring arm extends far beyond
its borders. It heavily influences the content of newspapers and television
programs for Chinese living abroad, and its diplomats regularly bar the few
reporters who are independent from covering events in the United States. "This happens a great deal," said Arthur Waldron, an
international-relations professor at Penn. "It is being practiced under our
very noses in a rather sinister way." http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/7963111.htm
Inquirer Staff Writer
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