AFP: China pulls BBC from airwaves for 'infringement' of rules

The British Broadcasting Corp. announced from London that Chinese authorities switched off the channel's encrypted signal through the Sinosat 1 satellite earlier this week.

"The transmission of BBC World has been suspended by the Chinese authorities since Monday following an item on the Falun Gong that appeared on the station," a BBC World spokeswoman told AFP.

A spokesman for the China International Television Corporation, the state-run body responsible for the import and export of programs to the country, confirmed the signal had been switched off.

"Yes, it's true, the reason is that some programs of the BBC infringed rules on the transmission of foreign programs in China," he said, declining to say what had caused the offence.

The spokesman said he did not know when or if the signal would be restored.

China's supreme authority on broadcasting matters, the State Administration of Radio, Television and Film, professed ignorance of the affair.

"We have not heard about it," a spokesman said.

The BBC spokeswoman said the offending item had run repeatedly on the channel's hourly news bulletin over Sunday and Monday as part of its fifth anniversary coverage of Hong Kong's return to China.

BBC World -- which is only available at upmarket hotels and a small number of foreigners' residence compounds in China -- could still be viewed in Asia via PanAmSat 2, 8 and 10, she said.

The corporation was in discussions with Chinese authorities in a bid to clear up the problem, the spokeswoman said, adding that the BBC was also unaware of what part of the report had caused offence. [……]

Rights groups say tens of thousands of Falun Gong [practitioners] have been jailed or sent to labor camps in recent years, while the group alleges that hundreds of [practitioners] have died in custody, mostly from beatings and maltreatment.

China and the BBC have long endured a difficult relationship, going back to 1989 when Beijing was angered at the corporation's coverage of the bloody crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

In 1994, the BBC was removed from Rupert Murdoch's Star TV satellite, which at the time beamed the corporation into China, in an attempt by the media tycoon to appease Beijing and advance his business interests in China.

The current license bringing the BBC into the country was granted by the China International Television Corporation in January 2001, marking a thaw in relations.

It allows the channel to be seen in around 60,000 three- to five-star hotel rooms.