News :: Civil & Human Rights
Help Protect Uncensored Satellite Television for the Chinese People
The TV Station that broke the SARS story in China and pressured the Chinese government to admit the crisis, will go off the air in China on April 15, 2005 due to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party.
The pioneering US based channel, New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV), is currently the only independent Chinese language satellite TV station with a significant audience in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). NTDTV reaches tens of millions of private satellite dishes across China with broadcasting that is free of Communist propaganda. The flow of such independent programming, including news and important cultural and entertainment content, helps promote democracy and freedom.
Unfortunately, Eutelsat, a Paris based satellite company that transmits NTDTV over Asia, has apparently caved in to pressure from the Chinese government to stop beaming content that is uncensored and sometimes critical of the PRC. Eutelsat has notified NTDTV that it will stop broadcasting the channel to Asia on April 15th. If Eutelsat succeeds in silencing NTDTV, it will enable the PRC, one of the world's worst violators of media freedom and human rights, to once again re establish full censorship over broadcast information available to its citizens. While other private sector media firms transmit programming to Chinese audiences, that content is subjected to either formal Communist censorship or profit-seeking self-censorship by firms unwilling to risk angering Beijing’s dictators.
Please help protect uncensored satellite television for the Chinese people by signing an on-line petition at:
www.ntdtv.com/xtr/eng/eutelsat/petition.htm
“THERE IS NO FREEDOM WITHOUT FREEDOM OF SPEECH”