China bans Summer Palace maker
p2pnet.net OT News:- Director Lou Ye, 40, has been attacked by Chinese censors for screening his Summer Palace, which centred on the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, without government approval.
Also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the People’s Republic of China attacked and left many civilians dead, “the figure ranging from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross),” says Wikipedia.
The movie, Palme d’Or candidate at the at the Cannes Film Festival in France, will now be confiscated, “and all profits from it seized,” according to the state Xinhua news agency, quoted by PR Inside.
Lou showed Summer Palace, “without permission for its general release from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), the Beijing-based Legal Mirror newspaper reported Monday,” according to Xinhua.
SARFT publicized its decision on September 1, it states, adding, “A senior official with SARFT confirmed the punishment to Xinhua on Monday but refused to discuss the case further.”
Earlier reports said Summer Palace wasn’t licensed because of its “sensitive theme” and “technical problems,” says the story.
In another China censorship scandal, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Google were recently named by Amnesty International as being among companies implicated in helping governments censor the Net, or track down users.
Also See:
PR Inside – Lou Ye banned from filming, September 5, 2006
Xinhua – Director severely punished for evading censorship rules, September 4, 2006
censorship scandal – Google, et al, Code of Conduct, July 25, 2006
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