China’s broadcasting regulator has banned BBC World News, accusing it of flouting guidelines over a hard-hitting report on Beijing’s treatment of the country’s Uighur minority.
Thursday’s decision came just days after the UK’s own regulator revoked the license of Chinese broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN) for contravening British law on state-backed ownership.
In an overnight statement, the Chinese National Radio and Television Administration said BBC World News reports about China were found to “seriously violate” broadcast guidelines.
Photo: Reuters
That includes “the requirement that news should be truthful and fair” and not “harm China’s national interests.”
The agency “does not permit the BBC to continue broadcasting in China, and does not accept its new annual application for broadcast,” it added.
The BBC said it was “disappointed” with the move, which applies to mainland China, where the channel is already censored and restricted to international hotels.
“The BBC is the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster and reports on stories from around the world fairly, impartially and without fear or favor,” a BBC spokeswoman said.
British Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab called the ban “an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom.”
“China has some of the most severe restrictions on media and Internet freedoms across the globe, and this latest step will only damage China’s reputation in the eyes of the world,” he added.
In Washington, US Department of State spokesman Ned Price denounced the BBC ban and called on China to allow an “informed citizenry” that can freely exchange ideas.
“We call on the PRC and other nations with authoritarian controls over their population to allow their full access to the Internet and media,” Price told reporters, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Yesterday, public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong — an independent, but government-funded service based in the territory — also announced that it would “suspend the relay of BBC World Service and BBC News Weekly.”
Conservative Party Lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, a hawk on UK-China ties, criticized Beijing’s move as “both regrettable and entirely unsurprising.”
“While this is a largely symbolic tit-for-tat retaliatory move, the deteriorating environment for journalism in China is a concern for us all,” he told reporters.
Besides its reporting on Xinjiang, the BBC has also aired a hard-hitting documentary accusing China of covering up the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic around the city of Wuhan in late 2019.
It on Wednesday last week published its report detailing harrowing accounts of torture and sexual violence against Uighur women in Chinese camps in Xinjiang.
The lengthy investigation based on witness testimonies reported claims of systematic rape, sexual abuse and torture of female detainees by police and guards in the western region.
The area is home to the mainly Muslim Uighur minority and has seen a sweeping security crackdown by Chinese forces in the past few years.
Rights groups believe at least 1 million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking Muslims are incarcerated in camps in Xinjiang.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has dismissed the BBC investigation as “false.”
The British government said it showed “clearly evil acts” and there was strong condemnation from the US Department of State.
However, London has resisted pressure to follow the current and former US administrations and call the treatment of the Uighurs “genocide.”
China is accused of compelling Uighurs to parrot Communist Chinese Party propaganda and renounce Islam, of forcibly sterilizing women and imposing a regime of forced labor.
After initially denying the camps existed, Beijing acknowledged them, saying they were vocational training centers aimed at combating Islamic extremism.
China last week said British regulator Ofcom’s decision to pull CGTN from the airwaves was based on “ideological prejudice and political reasons.”
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