CNY Trumps CBC

For those that don’t know CNY is one of the abbreviations for Chinese “People’s Currency”, and the CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s national public broadcaster. That sets the stage as it were.

This last Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 CBC was supposed to be airing Peter Rowe’s new documentary Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong on CBC Newsworld’s documentary program, The Lens. Sadly just hours before the show was slated to be aired Mr. Rowe received word that the film wasn’t going to be shown and that they felt the film should be re-edited. Even though CBC editors and lawyers approved the documentary in March it was not going to be shown. Even though Red Wall was promoted in television spots and on the CBC website for weeks it was not going to be shown. Mr. Rowe obviously questioned this last minute decision.

Two related facts came quickly and malignantly to light, like the first eruption of a melanoma on otherwise fair skin – CBC is currently Canada’s 2008 Beijing Games Olympic Broadcaster and cultural representative in Ottawa’s Chinese embassy had called CBC within the last week to complain about the film.

Peter Rowe was informed that he must change segments of the film that are particularly sensitive to the Chinese authorities. One segments involves the confirmed report that Chinese communist regime has been killing Falun Gong believers for their organs and selling the organs for profit, some to foreigners. Another “inappropriate” segment is one that discredits an alleged Falun Gong “self-immolation” incident. An analysis of the self-immolation video in Rowe’s film supports that the incident was staged!

How much would anyone like to wager that the Chinese government threatened CBC with the loss of the Olympic Broadcast privileges or other similar threats that would have made their broadcasting of the Olympic impossible or ineffective? How fast do you think CBC gave in and kowtowed to Beijing?

For more details you can go Epoch Times, which provided the source of this post.

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8 Responses to “CNY Trumps CBC”

  1. Pat Says:

    My mother was a Stewardess (her words) for Pan Am on the very last free flight out of Shanghai in 1947 as Mao’s troops took over the airport. She, having worked in and around China for quite sometime before this made the statement to me “Don’t trust the Chinese Governments, the people individually yes, but not their institutions because they will have influence in the most suprising places.”

    I never paid much attention until our spy plane got accidentally rammed by a chinese “jet fighter jock” and made an emergency landing on Chinese soil. When Senator Diane Feinstein of California said that the U.S. should apologize to the Chinese for this incident, I and I’m sure a lot of other Americans did a double take. Why? They ran into us and it all occured over international waters! Well, come to find out Ms. Feinstein’s hubby was and is invested to the tune of billions in China.

    I think what I’m saying here is I see a threat. This organ harvesting thing seems to keep coming back, maybe it is a Sasquatch story, maybe not.

  2. Charles Liu Says:

    It’s a Sasquatch story.

    CBC denies Chinese pressure in pulling film:

    http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/274612

    The film got pulled due to inaccuracies. For example the organ harvesting allegation David Kilgour is promoting has been discredited by multiple undercover investigations.

    – US State Dept:

    http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&
    y=2006&m=April&x=20060416141157uhyggep0.5443231

    http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL33437.pdf (section CRS-7)

    – Chinese dissident Harry Wu:

    http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060806_1.htm

    http://www.cicus.org/info_eng/artshow.asp?ID=6491

  3. jonolan Says:

    Pat,

    The threat is quite real. China keeps hiding behind- and milking their “Emerging Nation” status, all the while spreading heir influence across the globe. While it is as safe to trust any individual Chinese person as it to trust any other individual, never the trust the Chinese people as a whole nor their government. Their interests are solely to benefit themselves by any means necessary. 6000 years of self-centered xenophobia doesn’t change overnight – or overcentury.

    I freely admit that in the modern world of economic power plays and realpolitik China has some hard yet valuable lessons to teach the “Developed Nations.”

  4. jonolan Says:

    Liu Xi?nsh?ng (or is it Liu W?iyuĂĄn?),

    Firstly, of course the CBC would deny that they knuckled under to pressure from Beijing. The Canadian PM would have been very annoyed to have his just appointed President of Canada’s state-sponsored television company publicly admitting to such a thing. Can you honestly expect anyone, or any organization to admit to kowtowing to foreign pressure that way?

    And it’s such a Sasquatch story!

    Involuntary organ donation was illegal under Chinese law, but Beijing did not have a good track record for enforcing the policy. They then amendmended of the law in 1984, making legal to harvest organs from convicted criminals.

    The World Medical Association (WMA) condemned this practice in 1985, in 1987, and in 1994 to no avail; The Chinese government didn’t care about censure by guowai (Chinese for Foreign or Alien) peoples. After applying what pressures that could be brought to bear, in 1998 the Secretary and Chairman of the World Medical Association and the Korean Medical Association reached an agreement with the Chinese Medical Association that these practices were undesirable and that they would investigate them jointly, with a view to stopping them. In 2000, the Chinese reneged and withdrew their cooperation!

    In 2001, a Chinese doctor applying for political asylum revealed that he had removed organs from executed prisoners for the transplant market under the auspices of the People’s Liberation Army. He claimed that he had operated to remove skin and corneas from executed criminals, and that other doctors sometimes took organs from bodies while their hearts were still beating.

    Finally In December 2005, Chinese officials reportedly confirmed that organs for transplant were obtained mainly from executed prisoners, and that steps were being taken to prevent abuse. In March 2006, the Chinese government announced that a new law banning the sale of human organs and requiring that donors’ written consent for their organs to be removed would take effect July 1. Of course it’s not too difficult to coerce someone in State custody to provide such written consent – or any other statements their torturers demand!

    In 2006, the World Medical Association once again condemned the practice of using prisoners as organ donors, and called upon China to stop the practice for exactly the reason that prisoners in China prison camps were not allowed to deny consent.

    At last, in In October 2007, bowing to huge international pressure, and from a campaign to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games for China’s human rights abuses, the Chinese Medical Association agreed on a moratorium of commercial organ harvesting from condemned prisoners, but did not specify a deadline.

    There may be no definitive proof that the Falun Gong have been literally butchered and parted out by the PRC, but it is proven – and grudgingly admitted to by the PRC – that organ harvesting from prisoners an was accepted and ongoing practice within China until as recently as last month! There is no logical reason to think this wasn’t extended to Falun Gong prisoners as well.

    Yeah, such a Sasquatch story! 😉

  5. Pat Says:

    Thanks Jonolon for the above post.

    I was sent to the Cote D’Ivoire in 2002 to help with the humanitarian disaster following the Coup and revolt. It was interesting for me to note that although it was a French colony and still has a French military base, the Chinese are the most numerous expatriates! Same is true for the Caribbean Island of St. Vincent!

  6. Jenn Says:

    I’m boycotting the Olympics, period, and the station here that carries them, unless they’d like to give equal time to what’s happening in Darfur.

  7. Charles Liu Says:

    The fundamental flaw in Falun Gong’s claim is the fact Falun Gong disciples are not put on death row. Rather, Falun Gong disciples who break laws are sent to deprogramming centers via custodial detention (also known as Laogai). Is cult deprogramming torture? That’s debatable IMHO, but what is true is they are only dead in the sense the sect loses hold on these people after deprogramming.

    Here’s an article unflattering to the Chinese government that speaks to the fact western anti-cult experts were consulted in the Chinese government’s effort to deprogam Falun Gong disciples:

    http://bernie.cncfamily.com/acm/falun_gong_deprogramming.htm

    There are probably cases of police abuse contrary to stated law, but if there’s no death camp then there exists a very different reality than what’s alleged.

  8. jonolan Says:

    On Falun Gong, the issue is admittedly debatable; there are conflicting reports on the extent of the CPC’s brutality towards them. Unfortunately all the reports come from sources that cannot be fully trusted due to expected bias.

    None of that changes the fact that the CPC complained to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) through their cultural representative at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa and, despite all their attorneys previously approving the documentary, the CBC immediately canceled the program pending editing out sections unfavorable to China.

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