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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 74 asking everyone, if you see one, snap it on your cell phone and send the location to us. Secondly, there is a group in Hong Kong that is trying to support lawyers. In the United States we are backing American lawyers and judges who will try to support Chinese lawyers. They are the ones who are going to be needed to defend Chinese journalists and they will also be targeted. Panel 6 How does China deal with foreign and peripheral news media ? moderator, Vincent Brossel Head, Asia Desk, Reporters Without Borders Voice of Tibet: struggling to be heard Oystein Alme Director, Foundation Voice of Tibet We are an independent NGO registered in Norway, to “produce and transmit unbiased news and information to Tibet and China in Tibetan and Mandarin languages - through short-wave radio transmissions, satellite transmissions and Internet.” Voice of Tibet is the only station outside China with daily programs about Tibet in Mandarin. I would like to tell you my experiences of nearly 13 years of broadcasting into Tibet and China, but first I want to comment on the events in Tibet since March 10. To me, it was a big surprise that after a few days of protests in Lhasa the police and security forces seemingly vanished on March 14. The next morning, the Chinese authorities spread footage from the previous day’s riots in Lhasa worldwide and at home. Normally, portraying the vulnerability and weakness of the authorities in this way would never have been an option. But the riot images were accompanied by the message that the Tibetans are criminals, looters and even terrorists, and that the Dalai Lama is the mastermind behind it all. To me, it seems that the Chinese authorities took the opportunity to portray the Tibetans that way, just as after 9/11 they smeared Uighur activists in Xinjiang with the terrorist label. Knowing that demonstrations are not allowed to be reported in China, the fact that the policy can change to portray the Tibetans as terrorists masterminded by the Dalai Lama is alarming. Later, the official media said Tibetans were planning suicide bomb attacks during the Beijing Olympics.
Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 75 It seems as though the “strike hard” and “re-education” campaigns in Tibet following the expulsion from the territory of tourists and international media is a way of stepping up assimilation policies that have been threatening Tibetan culture and identity for centuries. In this perspective, it is important to credit the Tibetans for not targeting the Chinese people with their protests and demonstrations, but instead directing their anger at the Chinese political leadership. The monks who broke free to reach the international press on a guided tour to Labrang on April shouted, “We want human rights” and “We have no rights” and many said, “We are not against the Beijing Olympics, we are for the Beijing Olympics.” Of course, these statements will never reach the Chinese public, at least not through the domestic media. Art. 35 in the Chinese Constitution reads: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.” I have not much to add to this, except to question why these rights are not respected. For the more than 12 years that Voice of Tibet has been on the air, our transmissions have been targeted by systematic jamming by China. For years, we have protested these violations. But the International Telecommunication Union, a global institution under the UN umbrella that is responsible for regulating and overseeing international broadcasting law, tells us they are aware of the problem and that we have their moral support, but they can do nothing. They say, “It is a waste of time coming to us.” In the late 1990s, the Chinese authorities began understanding the popularity and impact of foreign short-wave radio broadcasts into Tibet. They responded in 2000 with what is called the XiXing project. Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in improving their own ability to broadcast their own programs and to jam or block access to foreign broadcasts. There are two ways of blocking access to short-wave radio broadcasts, and our transmissions are targeted by both: • Jamming on top of Voice of Tibet’s registered frequencies, using high power transmitters outside the cities of Xian, Beijing, Kashi and Nanning. Most of the time, transmissions from two different locations target each and every Voice of Tibet transmission. • Local or “ground-wave” jamming using small transmitters in or outside more than 100 cities and townships in Tibetan areas. These local jammers are very effective, but have a limited reach of about 20 kilometers in radius, depending on the topography of the area. The jamming transmissions do not stop at the border. The signals, containing a mix of dragon dance music, drums and noise, badly affect listening in India, Nepal and all the way to Europe.
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