The Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) on Wednesday said that it was shutting its news bureau in Beijing after waiting two years in vain for a work permit for its journalists.
The publicly owned news outlet had numerous exchanges with Chinese officials in Canada over the past two years about visas, but without a resolution, CBC News editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon said in a blog post.
A letter sent in April to the Chinese ambassador to Canada was acknowledged, but not followed up, Fenlon said.
Photo: Reuters
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The decision comes months after CBC News, which has had an office in China for more than 40 years, was forced to shut its Moscow bureau by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in response to a Canadian ban on Russian state TV station Russia Today.
A correspondent for CBC’s French-language service, Radio-Canada, was still waiting for a visa from China after having applied for one in October 2020, Fenlon said.
CBC’s English-language journalist who returned to Canada when China started to lock down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has not been able to return as a permanent correspondent either.
“While there was no dramatic expulsion or pointed public statements, the effect is the same. We can’t get visas for our journalists to work there as permanent correspondents,” Fenlon said.
CBC would search for a new a location to cover east Asia over the coming months, while Radio-Canada is to station its journalist in Taiwan for the next two years, Fenlon added.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS