[huridocs-tech] Jacques Chirac, on visit to Beijing, taxed about sales of French equipment to jam foreign broadcasts into China

RSF Press release
8 October 2004

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) signalled to Jacques
Chirac that a French firm has sold China equipment to jam foreign
broadcasts, as the French president headed to Beijing with a large business
delegation for a 9-10 October visit.

The international press freedom organisation said it had information that
French company Thalès had provided such equipment to the Chinese government.

"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," it said.

ALLISS antennas, known for their efficiency and sturdiness, set up by
Thalès particularly in the city of Kashi, in the extreme north-west of the
country, are used to jam programmes from Norway-based Voice of Tibet, BBC
World Service, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

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, it said.

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.

A Thalès representative in China told Reporters Without Borders 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.

Executives at the affected radio stations confirmed to Reporters Without
Borders that Beijing has since 2001 boosted its capacity to jam broadcasts.
Radio Free Asia for example has to broadcast on some dozen different
frequencies.

They are nevertheless jammed by a double effect : the broadcast of a mix of
thuds and music emanating from long wave transmitters, with a range of
around 2,000 kilometres and from local transmitters, sited around five
kilometres around major cities.

The French government should draw the attention of national companies to
the dangers of selling certain equipment to the Chinese authorities, the
organisation said.

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.

Although a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), China
systematically refuses to respond to complaints from the governments
involved, as was the case when British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell
visited China in December 2003. 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.


========== HURIDOCS-Tech listserv ==========
Send mail intended for the list to <huridocs-tech@hrea.org>.
Archives of the list can be found at:
http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/maillist.php
To subscribe to the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>,
with the following text in the message: subscribe huridocs-tech
To unsubscribe from the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>,
with the following text in the message: unsubscribe huridocs-tech
If you have problems (un)subscribing, contact <owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org>.