China: ‘Rumour Mill’ BBC Poses a ‘National Security Threat’.
CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images5:19
China’s Global Times government propaganda newspaper dismissed the BBC as a “rumor mill” that had threatened China’s “national security” in a justification of the Communist Party banning the global broadcaster.
The Party removed BBC, which typically broadcasts left-of-center content, from Chinese airwaves – and in Hong Kong, where China has illegally usurped local authority – after the publication of a graphic report detailing extensive torture, including systematic rape, of individuals trapped in China’s western concentration camp system. Survivors told the BBC that guards would bring men into the camps every night to rape Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minority women; many who experienced rape were also sexually assaulted with electric torture devices.
Chinese officials have denied the report and claimed that all those testifying of abuses are hired actors and assorted criminals, without providing any evidence for these claims. China has openly admitted to building and maintaining concentration camps for Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, but refers to them as “vocational training centers” and claims they are part of a larger social program to boost the economy in the nation’s west.
The move to ban the BBC initially appeared to be a response to the United Kingdom revoking the broadcast license of China Global Television Network (CGTN), a Communist Party propaganda network. China’s broadcast regulatory authority had not mentioned the CGTN incident in its statement on BBC’s removal. Instead, officials said in a statement that the BBC “fails to meet the requirements to broadcast in China as an overseas channel.” The ban will remain in place for at least one year.
Hong Kong authorities similarly announced that the BBC would be ineligible to broadcast in the former British colony. While the official statements from Chinese officials did not mention reporting on the Uyghur genocide, China’s National Radio and Television Administration independently condemned the reporting as having “infringed the principles of truthfulness and impartiality in journalism.”
