BBC Monitoring (SCMP): Hong Kong TV coverage of Jiang axed over Falun Gong fears

07/03/2002

China Central Television [CCTV] and Phoenix Chinese TV scrapped live coverage of President Jiang's speech and the swearing-in ceremony for Tung Chee-hwa and his new cabinet on Monday [1 July] because of fears it would be [interrupted] by the Falun Gong, industry sources say.

The surprise move came after the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that [practitioners] of [Falun Gong] had [tapped into] one of the mainland's major broadcast satellites and transmitted pro-[Falun Gong] messages and images twice earlier that week.

Fears that Falun Gong [practitioners] could intercept Monday's live broadcast and create an international embarrassment for Beijing were the main reason behind the cancellations, industry sources said yesterday.

They said Jiang's speech was one of his last major public addresses before the Communist Party's landmark 16th Congress scheduled for October when leadership changes are planned.

Yesterday, officials from different CCTV departments declined to comment on the cancellations. Hong Kong-based Phoenix also declined to comment.

Mainland viewers said Phoenix Chinese TV, which can be seen by more than 100 million people on the mainland, announced its live coverage of the Hong Kong ceremony during its main news magazine program on Sunday.

On previous occasions when Jiang has visited Hong Kong, both CCTV and Phoenix Chinese TV carried live broadcasts of his speeches or activities.

Sources said the president's speech at the Convention and Exhibition Centre on Monday was billed by mainland officials as an important one in which he outlined the central government's views of relations between Hong Kong and the mainland over the next five years.

Yesterday, nearly all the mainland's major newspapers, including the Farmers' Daily [Nongmin Ribao], carried the full text of the speech on their front pages.

On Monday night, CCTV broadcast a taped version of Jiang's full speech in a special time slot immediately after the main evening news bulletin.

Sources said yesterday that mainland security forces are stepping up investigations to trace the source of last week's satellite hijacking.

Most of CCTV's 10 channels and 10 other provincial channels carried on the Sinosat-1 satellite were interrupted on 23 June and 25 June with pro- Falun Gong messages which lasted for just seconds to several minutes. The satellite carries TV signals especially for the mainland's rural and remote areas.

Security officials are baffled as to how Falun Gong [practitioners] managed to pull off such a sophisticated act. They now suspect the [practitioners] staged the [tapping] from a foreign country or operated hi-tech equipment on a moving vehicle in a mainland city to avoid detection.