International media watchdogs around the world have condemned French based satellite company Eutelsat for having bowed to pressure from China. It has dropped independent Chinese language TV network New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) from its satellite distribution over China. Preventing the New York based network from broadcasting uncensored Chinese language news into China.
"We opened a historic open satellite window in the great wall of information control that is forcibly maintained by Beijing," said NTDTV board director Joe Zhao.
Economic blackmail seems to become more and more the norm as China is increasingly sought after by foreign companies and countries. Freedom of information is something the leaders in Beijing fear. In the last couple of years many Internet cafes have been shut down or heavily controlled in an attempt to prevent ordinary Chinese from accessing websites considered subversive or critical to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In 2003, NTDTV broke the news of the SARS virus in China three weeks before Beijing owned up to the problem.
Last year, Europe's largest satellite company, Eutelsat, signed a contract with NTDTV to provide transmission to Asia. One year later, NTDTV was informed that its contract would not be automatically renewed.
"The inexplicable decision to suddenly end the contract of an independent broadcaster in this way appears to be a shocking act of censorship," said Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)."It diminishes free expression to satisfy the intolerance of Beijing and it reinforces cynicism among China's leaders about the western world's attachment to human rights and democratic values."
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