Pirate Radio: Group Claims First Independent Broadcast in China Since 1949
by Josh Gerstein
Fri, 8 Aug 2008 at 10:25 AM
Reporters Sans Frontiers also known as Reporters Without Borders is claiming that this morning the press freedom group carried out the first independent radio broadcast in China since the Communists took power in 1949.
The group said its 20-minute broadcast on 104.4 FM this morning called on the Chinese Government to respect press freedom and free speech rights.
"The Chinese authorities refused to issue visas to ten of our members but this has not stopped us from making ourselves heard in Beijing by means of a clandestine radio broadcast using miniaturised FM transmitters and antennas," the group's secretary general, Robert Ménard, said in a statement posted on the Web. "Reporters Without Borders devised and carried out this protest in a spirit of resistance against state control of the media."
As an aside, I just saw two pairs of guys entering the press area of the stadium with what looked like radio triangulation equipment. In each pair, one guy had the kind of tablet laptop where you can flip the screen to the outside and the other fellow had what looked like a plastic covered flat traingular antenna sort of like the ones many of us used to have before the advent of cable and satellite TV. These are probably frequency police looking for an errant news crew using a wireless mike on an unauthorized frequency, but I'm sure a similar team was dispatched to hunt down the pirate broadcasters earlier today.
By the way, I was able, via Blackberry, to reach the RSF Web site from here in Beijing, even though the sites of numerous human rights, Tibet and Darfur activist groups are still being blocked by China from Web connections inside and outside the official press centers here.
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