Broadcast group condemns China over radio jamming

Extract from ABC News

Updated 8 Mar 2013, 4:09pm

Photo: The Association for International Broadcasting says English-language broadcasts from Radio Australia, the BBC World Service and the Voice of America are being jammed.  (Radio Australia, file photo)

An international broadcast association has condemned the deliberate jamming of shortwave broadcasts, including those from the ABC's Radio Australia service, into Asia. 

The Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) says English-language broadcasts from Radio Australia, the BBC World Service and the Voice of America are being jammed.
Chief Executive Simon Spanswick has told Radio Australia’s Connect Asia program research has indicated the jamming signals appear to be coming from within China.
"It appears to be quite wide," he said.
"We've been talking to some monitors who keep ears on the shortwave bands around Asia and they say that it's certainly audible well outside China.
"So, one imagines, even with the geographic scale of China itself, that this is right across the region."

Audio: Hear the Interference during a broadcast of the Asia Pacific program (ABC News)

The AIB says broadcasts in Mandarin from broadcasters including the BBC, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America have been interfered with for many years.
Mr Spanswick says while the methodology appears to be the same, this is the first time English-language services have been targeted.
"Essentially what you do if you're trying to stop people listening to a program on shortwave is you transmit another audio feed on the same frequency.
"What the Chinese have done for a long time is actually broadcast Chinese folk music...what's happening in this case is that they're transmitting a different sort of noise.
"The aim is to simply make it so uncomfortable to listen to that people switch off and don't bother trying to listen to the program that they wanted to get."
The AIB has lodged protests over the jamming with the Chinese embassies in Washington, London and Canberra.
Mr Spanswick says it's particularly concerning at a time when China is expanding its own international radio and television services.
"They're going global...and nobody is trying to stop them from making available information about what the Chinese Government wants the rest of the world to hear," he said.
"So there's go to be a level playing field...there's a universal right to fair and free information and freedom of speech.

"Jamming is simply so contrary to that sort of notion that it simply can't be allowed to continue."