PureInsight | April 13, 2009
[PureInsight.org] On March 13, 2009, regarding the case that many Epoch Times newspapers were stolen, the Supreme Court in Ontario, Canada pronounced it proved to be true that the defendant, Wang Cong, stole Epoch Times newspapers, and thus she must pay $2300 (Canadian) to the Epoch Times office in Toronto. In addition, she was also ordered to pay 4% interest, starting from the day she was caught stealing the newspaper (April 17, 2008). After reading this news, I thought of some other related cases that were worth mentioning.
1. In February 2004, the Supreme Court in Ontario, Canada decided that Pan Xinchun, the Vice Consul-General of China in Toronto, committed the crime of defamation. Pan wrote a letter to the Toronto Star newspaper defaming local Falun Gong practitioner Joel Chipkar as being a member of a “sinister cult.” The court ordered Pan Xinchun to pay $10,000 for Mr. Chipkar’s legal fees and a $1,000 symbolic charge for damages. The court decided that Pan could not claim immunity and agreed that Pan “acted maliciously and outside of his consular functions.”
2. In July 2006, a court in Milan, Italy ruled that a European Chinese newspaper was guilty of libel. Dall' Alba, the director of the Chinese newspaper, and Jiang Ming, the reporter (his pen name is Taishan) had been imposed with a hefty fine as a punishment. Falun Dafa practitioners won the case. The defendants admitted that they did it under the pressure and arrangement of the Chinese Consulate there.
3. Following the directive from its headquarters in Hong Kong, the Ming Pao Daily newspaper closed down its Eastern U.S. edition on January 31, 2009, and it then closed down its Western U.S. edition on February 25, 2009.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Jiang Zemin’s clique have persecuted Falun Gong for over nine years. Jiang's genocidal policy against Falun Gong practitioners has been “defaming their reputations, bankrupting them financially, and destroying them physically.” They have controlled all the media in China to create all kinds of false stories: the self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square, lies about killing, or accumulating wealth, etc. The CCP just wanted to stir up the ordinary Chinese people to hate Falun Gong. Meanwhile, the persecution also went on overseas. Besides the cases of the two newspapers mentioned above, many other overseas media directly quoted the defaming words from CCP officials against Falun Gong. As a result, at the beginning of the persecution, many overseas Chinese believed the slanderous lies from the CCP and were very hostile toward Falun Gong practitioners who tried to clarify the truth kindly.
Human rights are universal values. In western countries, freedom of speech and freedom of belief are regarded as fundamental human rights and are protected by law. Interference with those human rights from a foreign country is not allowed. In 2001, the Jamestown Foundation, an independent non-profit organization, reported that the Ming Pao Daily was one of the newspapers that the CCP tried to control. The report found that when increased immigration from Mainland China changed the profile of the Chinese-American community, the CCP made “aggressive efforts in media” to control overseas Chinese newspapers, television stations, and radio stations. This was achieved in a number of ways, including using economic ties to influence independent media that had business relations with China, purchasing broadcast time and advertising space, providing free, ready-to-go programming and content, and deploying government personnel to work in these media, thus achieving influence from within their ranks.
Another China Brief report from the foundation revealed that “Employees at Ming Pao's New York office have told sources that their ‘true boss’ is none other than the Chinese Consulate [in New York], and that they are obligated to do whatever the Consulate asks.” The second case above also supported this.
It was reported on overseas Chinese web sites that at the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Bureau Central Committee meeting in January 2009, now satisfied with their control of overseas Chinese media, the top CCP officials decided it was time to set their sights on Western news outlets and make substantial investments in their overseas propaganda efforts. But the Ming Pao newspaper closing down in the U.S. east and west shows that the CCP's propaganda went against the will of the people and will eventually be eliminated. This is a defeat for the CCP's attempts to influence overseas Chinese media.
On the other hand, as the independent and outspoken media, the Epoch Times newspaper upholds universal human values, human rights and freedom, and reports news objectively and truthfully, which has won a lot of praises from the international community. In 2005, the Epoch Times was recognized by the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada for being the first newspaper to have extensive investigative reporting on the SARS outbreak in China. Today, the Epoch Times has offices in 30 countries across five continents, and the content is published in 17 languages. The Chinese edition of the Epoch Times newspaper (Da Ji Yuan) has become the largest Chinese-language newspaper outside of Mainland China and Taiwan.
For example, in Canada, the first Chinese-language Epoch Times newspaper was published in 2000, and now it is already the largest Chinese-language newspaper in Canada. It covers 7 provinces and 22 major cities. At the beginning, it was a weekly newspaper. In 2004, it expanded to a daily newspaper in Toronto and Vancouver. French and English editions of the newspaper are also available in Canada.
Between the good and the evil, it is obvious which triumphs. Kind-hearted people should think carefully and choose a bright future for themselves.
Translated from: http://zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2009/3/15/58348.html
