alleged involvement in delivering equipment to the Communist nation to jam foreign broadcasts.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) organization said a French firm sold China the needed equipment to jam programs of radio stations such as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
It was not immediately clear if Christian radio networks have also been jammed.
One of them, Far East Broadcasting Company, said it had not experienced interference in the last 20 years as it does not broadcast political programs but the Gospel to an estimated Chinese audience of up to eight million people. (Pictured Chinese man listening to radio).
However Reporters Without Borders said it had information that French company Thalès had provided equipment to the Chinese government to jam especially Western funded networks.
Its ALLISS antennas, known for their efficiency and sturdiness, were set up particularly in the city of Kashi, in the extreme north-west of the country, "to jam programmes" from Norway-based Voice of Tibet as well as the BBC, VOA, and RFA, the Paris based media rights watchdog added.
"This installation in an isolated border zone allows the government to scramble long wave radio broadcasts by international radio stations in Europe and Central Asia very effectively indeed. There are understood to be around a dozen further sites of the same type, including on Hainan Island in the south, north of Nanjing in the east, at Urumqi, north-west, and in Kunming in the south."
"WALL OF SOUND"
Reporters Without Borders urged the French government to warn companies to the dangers of selling certain equipment to China saying "it is regrettable that a French company is involved in setting up a "great wall of sound" that violates the right of free access to information for hundreds of millions of people."
The statement came as Chirac headed a trade delegation as part of a four day visit to the region to boost commercial links with China. However Thalès reportedly said that there was nothing in the contracts signed with the Chinese that specified the use of the equipment. Thalès sold equipment to the Chinese authorities in 2001 and 2002, Reporters Without Borders claimed.
"The French government should draw the attention of national companies to the dangers of selling certain equipment to the Chinese authorities, the organization added.
FRENCH FIRMS
"It would be a shame if French firms became auxiliaries of the Chinese Communist Party as in the case of Italian Iveco vehicles, converted in China into mobile execution chambers. The same applies to routers sold to Beijing by Cisco to block thousands of websites and emails."
Radio and other means of communications have become increasingly crucial for persecuted groups, including Christian house churches that have been the target of attacks by Communist authorities, BosNewsLife established. The Chinese government has made clear it wants to protect its system and says it only prosecutes "sects dangerous for Chinese society."
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), China has refuses to respond to complaints from the governments involved, the group said. In December 2003 British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell visited China in December, before him, the US public body the International Broadcasting Bureau, responsible for Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, laid a complaint with the ITU, "that was rejected outright by Beijing."
WITH AUTHOR: STEFAN J. BOS
