| Chinese communist hate propaganda will now be allowed to be broadcast in Canada due to a decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) charges a Toronto-based group called Canadians Against Propaganda (CAP).
In December, the CRTC gave Rogers Communications Inc. permission to add nine TV channels owned by the Communist Party of China to its list of digital channels that can be offered to subscribers.
Elaine Xie, co-chair of CAP, describes the CRTC decision as "negligent."
"The communist party has a blatant history of persecution. They persecute, for example, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, democratic activists, Christians, Catholics. The media is the main tool for them to spread hate propaganda," says Xie. "We want more and more people to be aware of what the CRTC has decided because it’s harmful to Canadians in Canada."
She says content on the channels could threaten Canadians who fall into the Chinese-government-targeted groups.
"The targeted groups will be at risk of hate and also physical security attack," she says.
In its December decision, the CRTC noted that it had received evidence from groups opposed to the channel’s broadcast of "abusive comments" aired in news stories on China’s CCTV-4 in 1991 and 2001. One example the CRTC cited was a comment by a member of the general public who said in January 2001, "We have to stand against Falun Gong and thoroughly cleanse such non-religious and anti-human cults from our society." The CRTC noted that news stories on CCTV-4 have described Falun Gong as "anti-human," "anti-science," "anti-society" and an "evil cult" and "evil doctrine."
The CRTC concluded that such comments could expose individuals or target groups to "hatred or contempt" and "could incite violence and threaten the physical security of Falun Gong practitioners."
However, the CRTC decided that the evidence was too outdated to affect its decision. The CRTC said that CCTV-4 would be expected "to ensure that abusive comment is not aired" in its Canadian broadcasts or the CRTC could prevent it from being broadcast.
Helen del Val, CRTC commissioner for B.C. and the Yukon, says the onus was on those opposed to the channels being broadcast in Canada to prove that they were currently airing abusive comment against specific groups. She adds that the CRTC can’t just reject a channel due to unease that it is controlled by a communist government with a record of human rights abuse.
"THE CRTC decisions do not have as their purpose denunciation or endorsement of another country’s policies and we have to focus on the content of the program that is in question. If the program is a news piece then we have to look at that news piece and look at whether there was abusive comment in the news piece," she says.
del Val says the CRTC’s goal in approving such channels is "to improve and expand upon the diversity of these third-language services."
"We’re a country that respects freedom of expression and it’s a delicate balancing act of striking the balance amongst all of the values that we have," she says. She adds the CRTC will investigate any complaint against the new channels.
Xie is concerned that the CRTC doesn’t plan to monitor the channels itself and will instead rely on ordinary citizens to provide evidence of any offensive material.
"How can the CRTC determine if hate programming is being aired because the CRTC won’t monitor it," she says. "Collecting evidence is very difficult. People don’t sit around in their living room with a VCR ready and a blank tape." |
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