Socialists gotta stick together -- can't have the drones thinking for
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Jacques Chirac sells French equipment to jam foreign broadcasts into
China

(Oct. 09, 2004)Jacques Chirac, on visit to Beijing, talked about sales
of French equipment to jam foreign broadcasts into China

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans fronti¨¨res) signalled to
Jacques Chirac that a French firm has sold China equipment to jam
foreign broadcasts, as the French president headed to Beijing with a
large business delegation for a 9-10 October visit. (boxun.com)

The international press freedom organisation said it had information
that French company Thal¨¨s had provided such equipment to the Chinese
government.
³It is regrettable that a French company is involved in setting up a
³great wall of sound² that violates the right of free access to
information for hundreds of millions of people,² it said.

ALLISS antennas, known for their efficiency and sturdiness, set up by
Thal¨¨s particularly in the city of Kashi, in the extreme north-west
of the country, are used to jam programmes from Norway-based Voice of
Tibet, BBC World Service, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

This installation in an isolated border zone allows the government to
scramble long wave radio broadcasts by international radio stations in
Europe and Central Asia very effectively indeed, it said.

There are understood to be around a dozen further sites of the same
type, including on Hainan Island in the south, north of Nanjing in the
east, at Urumqi, north-west, and in Kunming in the south.

A Thal¨¨s representative in China told Reporters Without Borders that
there was nothing in the contracts signed with the Chinese that
specified the use of the equipment. Thal¨¨s sold equipment to the
Chinese authorities in 2001 and 2002.

Executives at the affected radio stations confirmed to Reporters
Without Borders that Beijing has since 2001 boosted its capacity to
jam broadcasts. Radio Free Asia for example has to broadcast on some
dozen different frequencies.

They are nevertheless jammed by a double effect: the broadcast of a
mix of thuds and music emanating from long wave transmitters, with a
range of around 2,000 kilometres and from local transmitters, sited
around five kilometres around major cities.

The French government should draw the attention of national companies
to the dangers of selling certain equipment to the Chinese
authorities, the organisation said.

It would be a shame if French firms became auxiliaries of the Chinese
Communist Party as in the case of Italian Iveco vehicles, converted in
China into mobile execution chambers. The same applies to routers sold
to Beijing by Cisco to block thousands of websites and emails.

Although a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU),
China systematically refuses to respond to complaints from the
governments involved, as was the case when British Foreign Office
minister Bill Rammell visited China in December 2003. Before him, the
US public body the International Broadcasting Bureau, responsible for
Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, laid a complaint with the ITU,
that was rejected outright by Beijing. (boxun.com)