May 23, 2005

A Press Conference was held in Chicago this past Thursday concerning European Satellite Company, Eutelsat, ending its contract with NTDTV-- the only company independently broadcasting into China and other Asian countries. Vanessa Rios, spokesperson for Epoch Times, made clear the danger in caving to CCP pressure. (Renee Gong/Epoch Times)

CHICAGO - A press conference was held this past Thursday to ask Illinoisans to help preserve the flow of truth into China.

A European satellite company, Eutelsat, is ending its contract with NTDTV, the only independent company currently broadcasting into China and other Asian countries. While Eutelsat seeks to gain profit by currying favor with China, millions of viewers will be shut out from access to truthful programming.

For just over one year New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) has been the only T.V. network to broadcast uncensored news and information into China, according to the NTDTV statement.

NTDTV "has been an honest voice that reports on the stories the Chinese Communist Party wants kept silent- e.g., the massive persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, Catholics, house Christians, and Tibetans, and the suppression of the labor and democracy movements. It has also shown the people of China democracy at work, as it has broadcast hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents peacefully defending their civil rights, the Taiwan elections, the U.S. presidential campaign, and much more."

Free press is a terrible threat to China. According to Jose Rivera, NTVTV spokesperson, "by its very nature, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must be at war with a free press. The rule of the CCP depends on lies. If the press is allowed to do its job and to report freely and honestly on life in China, the CCP's 55 year-long rule of terror would soon end."

"The French-based satellite company Eutelsat," says Rivera, "has wanted to use its broadcast of NTDTV into China as a bargaining chip to secure profitable contracts from China. In violation of its own company by-laws and the European Union conventions that govern its operation, Eutelsat refused to renew its contract with NTDTV on April 15.

After a massive public outcry, Eutelsat agreed to negotiate, but now Eutelsat now has a new strategy, according to Rivera.

While Eutelsat "formerly sold broadcast time on satellites. It now sells censorship and repression. After letting the Chinese know that it would drop NTDTV, Eutelsat was rewarded with rich Chinese broadcast contracts," continued Rivera.

While Eutelsat may be the first company to sell repression for profit, it is not the first to gain after succumbing to China's pressure.

"Consider that Yahoo, after signing a contract with China, agreed to censor itself inside China" said Vanessa Rios, spokesperson for The Epoch Times.

"Google agreed to alter its search functions so that Internet users inside China would never know the government was blocking their access to large numbers of sites."

The aim here by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), summed up Rios, "is changing the standards and the behavior of western media companies, the same companies that those of us here in the U.S. depend on for our news and information."

In all of these cases, Rios points out, "giant, powerful western media companies are eagerly abandoning the standards of free and democratic countries in order to serve the authoritarians in Beijing. These media companies are not transforming the tyranny in China; they are themselves adopting the ways of tyranny."

"The fight of NTDTV," says Rios, "to preserve its broadcasts into China is a fight that all Americans have a stake in. This is not merely a Chinese issue. This is about the future of our own freedom."

http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-5-23/28983.html