Opération Radio clando à Pékin

{fontsize} Clandestine FM radio broadcast today in Beijing by Reporters Without Borders, hours before Olympic opening ceremony

Members of Reporters Without Borders today broadcast "Radio Without Borders," China’s only independent FM radio station, in Beijing just hours before the start of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. In a programme lasting 20 minutes, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard and Chinese human rights activists called on the Chinese government to respect free speech.

"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," Ménard said. "Reporters Without Borders devised and carried out this protest in a spirit of resistance against state control of the media."

The press freedom organisation added : "This is the first non-state radio station to have broadcast in China since the Communist Party took power in 1949. Only international Chinese-language radio stations broadcasting on the short wave would be able to break this news and information monopoly, but they are jammed by the authorities."

The Radio Without Borders broadcast began at 08:08 local time on 08/08/08, exactly 12 hours before the start of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. The programme, in English, French and Mandarin, was heard in on 104.4 FM in different districts of the Chinese capital.

Read more here: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=28100