Media outlets banned from Chinese dinner

Newspaper and TV station left out Both sympathetic to Falun Gong

When Chinese President Hu Jintao is feted at a gala dinner tomorrow night in downtown Toronto by a raft of Canadian and Chinese business leaders, two media outlets will be conspicuously absent. The two, a newspaper and a satellite TV channel, report extensively on human rights abuse in China and the persecution of followers of Falun Gong, a quasireligious movement banned in China as an illegal “ cult.” The Epoch Times, a free broadsheet that publishes in Chinese and English, and the Chineselanguage New Tang Dynasty Television network were informed in emails yesterday that their media accreditation for Hu’s visit had been denied because of “ space limitations.” Both are based in New York, with Canadian offices. The dinner at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is being organized by the CanadaChina Business Council, which facilitates business ties with China. Thousands, from various political camps, are expected to protest Hu’s visit outside, including the Falun Gong. A spokesman for the business council explained that the organization is purely about business, which guided its decisions on whom to admit. “ We looked at media that would best serve the interest of our membership,” Victor Hayes said. Joe Wang, president of NTDTV Canada, said he suspected Chinese authorities were behind the exclusion.

“ I have strong suspicions,” he said. “ We are a general- interest TV station, not only entertainment and current affairs, but also business. So if that’s the selection criteria, we should be selected.” Hayes denied any Chinese government pressure, and a spokesperson from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa could not be reached for comment. But Wang remains skeptical. His employees have been barred from covering Chinese events in the past. An uproar resulted last January after the Chinese embassy in Ottawa revoked visas for two New Tang journalists intending to cover Prime Minister Paul Martin’s visit to China. Both The Epoch Times and New Tang describe themselves as independent media that are simply unafraid to report on human rights abuses in China.

Cindy Gu, the paper’s Eastern Canada president and a former spokeswoman for the Falun Gong, denied yesterday that the paper is an arm of the movement, which in turn strongly denies ties to either business.

Yet outsiders have questioned the paper’s neutrality, observing that most of its managers and reporters are practitioners. Whatever its official links, The Epoch Times, which also publishes in the U. S., Australia and Europe, has become a fresh means of getting out the message Falun Gong has tried to communicate through protests.

It claims to be Canada’s largest Chinese-language daily, with 100,000 circulation. A 50,000copy English weekly began publishing in Toronto in December.

The paper offers foreign and local news,

even crosswords and

recipes. It also regularly and unabashedly

prints anti- Chinese

Communist party editorials and crusades to get people to renounce their membership in the party.

“ They obviously do not want to be challenged as non- neutral, so they hide the fact that they’re Falun Gong media,” said Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China. “ But if you ask the reporters, they are all Falun Gong.” Kwan, who held a news conference with Amnesty International in Ottawa yesterday demanding the Prime Minister discuss human rights with Hu, said he has been interviewed by Epoch Times

reporters who tried to get him to say things, “ so I become a bit of a propaganda mouthpiece in their media.” Kwan is part of the Coalition on China, which presses Ottawa to raise its concerns with China. He criticized other Chineselanguage media in Toronto, which he said refuse to cover Falun Gong for fear of souring relations with China’s consulate.

“ This is ( Falun Gong’s) reaction,” he said. “They say, ‘If you’re not going to cover us, we’re powerful enough to create our own media outlet to tell our side of the story.’ ” And, he said, Falun Gong has not been afraid to start “ flexing its muscles.”