China angrily accused Taiwan-based followers of the banned Falun Gong sect of again hijacking satellite televisions signals and demanded Taipei take immediate action yesterday.
The repeated interruptions to signals from the SINOSAT communications satellite had come despite earlier warnings to Taipei that it must act, said the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council.
At the end of September, after the earlier incidents, Chinese officials had "urged Taiwanese authorities to take immediate action to find and stop the source of the signals to prevent a repetition of the incident," spokesman Li Weiyi (李維一) told reporters.
"But on Oct. 24, at 36 seconds after 10am, the 2A transmitter of the SINOSAT satellite was again the object of attack by an illegal signal," he said.
"On Oct. 29 at 17:00, an illegal signal seriously affected normal reception of programs transmitted by the 2A and 3A transmitters on several occasions," Li said.
Technical investigations "had determined that the source of the disruption was again found to be the municipality of Taipei," Li added.
"We demand that the Taiwanese authorities immediately find the source of the illegal signal and severely punish" those responsible, Li said.
China first announced in July that the hijackers had broken codes to access the SINOSAT system and spread Falun Gong propaganda during World Cup broadcasts the month before.
But at that time they were unaware of the source of the illegal broadcasts.
In September, officials said that by then regular interruptions had been traced back to Taipei, and demanded immediate action from Taiwan's government.
Taiwan pledged to prevent the transmission interruptions but said it had not been able to pinpoint the source immediately.
A week ago Beijing announced that a new French-made APSTAR VI satellite it was launching next year would be fitted with special technology to prevent "malicious interruptions."
China outlawed Falun Gong as an "evil cult" in mid-1999 and followers of the group have subsequently faced often brutal repression.
RSS