Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) yesterday said it is to suspend the broadcast of China Central Television (CCTV) and China Global Television Network (CGTN) after receiving a human rights complaint.
The programs from the Chinese state media companies would be off-air as SBS was reviewing a complaint from a human rights organization, a SBS spokesman said.
“Given the serious concerns it raises and the complexity of the material involved, we have made the decision to suspend the broadcast of the overseas-sourced CGTN and CCTV news bulletins while we undertake an assessment of these services,” SBS said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
A story on the SBS Web site said that human rights organization Safeguard Defenders wrote to SBS after the British media regulator revoked the license of CGTN due to “serious non-compliance offenses.”
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter from Safeguard Defenders to SBS said that CCTV had from 2013 to last year broadcast the forced confessions of some 56 people.
“These broadcasts involved the extraction, packaging and airing of forced and false confessions of prisoners held under conditions of duress and torture,” SBS cited the letter as saying.
SBS is a public service broadcaster, providing news and entertainment programing in multiple languages.
A 15-minute CGTN news service in English and 30-minute CCTV service in Chinese were part of SBS programing.
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