China's state television broadcasts were interrupted for nearly 15 minutes by video about the banned Falun Gong spiritual group, a spokesman for a Hong Kong-based satellite company said yesterday.
Falun Gong -- which China has labeled an "evil cult" and tried to suppress -- denied tampering with the programming beamed across the country.
The interference occurred on signals from the APSTAR 6 satellite on Sunday evening, and affected 25 channels -- 13 belonging to state-run CCTV and 12 provincial or city channels, spokesman Brian Lo for Hong Kong-based APT Satellite Holdings Ltd, which operates the satellite, said.
Lo declined to describe the inserted footage in detail, but said that whoever was responsible had tried to jam the satellite's signals for an hour but only managed to insert 14-and-a-half minutes of video, Lo said.
He said the interrupted programming was beamed to Shanghai and Shenzhen. Other provinces and regions affected included Guangdong, Hunan, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Zhejiang.
Lo said his company hasn't been able to trace the jamming signal and had reported the matter to Hong Kong's police and telecommunications authority. Police did not immediately comment.
Spokeswoman Diana Fu of the Office of the Telecommunications Authority said the department will study whether there are anti-jamming measures it can recommend to APT.
A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Falun Gong, which mixes slow-motion exercise and Buddhist and Taoist teachings, denied the group was behind the satellite jamming, saying it doesn't have the resources to do it.
"I don't think it's something ... we can do because we're just ordinary volunteers," Sophie Xiao said.
She characterized the allegations as a smear campaign against the spiritual group.
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