The Australian human rights organization Safeguard Defenders has written to the Australian Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) requesting that SBS review the station’s broadcast of news programs from China. SBS has now suspended the Chinese Communist Party‘s major foreign propaganda programs and is conducting an evaluation.
Early last month, the U.K. media regulator Ofcom revoked the broadcast license of CCTV International (Global TV Network, CGTN) in the U.K., noting that it did so because CGTN was “ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party” rather than operating independently, in violation of U.K. broadcasting regulations.
In a letter to SBS Australia, Defenders, a human rights organization dedicated to promoting the rule of law in Asian countries, said that between 2013 and 2020, CCTV broadcast news of forced confessions of some 56 people, involving the extraction, packaging and broadcast of confessions made by detained prisoners under duress and torture.
The letter added, “These violations involved the broadcast of ‘confessions’ extracted from suspects (victims) prior to any indictment, trial or conviction, and in many cases the victims were held incommunicado in secret locations without the assistance of legal counsel. “
“A significant number of ‘confessions’ have been broadcast not only in China, but internationally via CCTV-4 and CGTN.”
SBS’s “World Watch” series provides the Australian public with a service of international news bulletins, including 30 minutes of Mandarin news produced by CCTV and 15 minutes of news bulletins produced by CGTN.
A spokesman for the network said SBS had received a complaint that was currently being heard.
SBS said it decided to suspend the programs on both CGTN and CCTV channels after becoming aware of the serious human rights issues involved while the news services were evaluated.
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