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BEIJING: China should loosen its grip on the media
beyond the Olympic Games and not just for foreign reporters, the
European Union’s media commissioner said here Thursday.
“We appreciate that there is
some kind of opening with the Olympic Games,” European
Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding told
reporters on the second day of her visit to Beijing.
“I hope that this opening will
continue also after the Olympic Games.”
Reding said China’s communist
rulers should loosen the shackles on the domestic press both in the
traditional as well as new forms of media.
“My opinion is very simple. I
am against any government intervention in the media, whatever the
media are, if it is a print or it is a new media,” she said.
“It is not the business of the
government whatsoever to intervene in whatever way on the Internet.
Leave the Internet free without government intervention.”
Reding brought the issue up in
her discussions with ministers in charge of information and
scientific research, saying a free society is a prerequisite for the
development of a successful economy.
“I don’t believe that you can
separate one from the other,” she said.
On January 1 China lifted some
restrictions for foreign reporters, giving them more freedom to work
and travel in a bid to improve its image before the 2008 Beijing
Olympics.
But domestic media, including the
Internet, continue to be tightly controlled by the ruling Communist
Party which fears instability and challenges to its power.
The country is ranked by the
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders as the 163rd out of 167
countries on its global press freedom index.
--AFP
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