China Researcher “Shocked and Appalled” by Ted Turner Interview

Front Royal, VA, 04/14/09 – In response to a May 7^th interview by CNN
founder Ted Turner on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show,” researcher Colin
Mason of the Population Research Institute (PRI) has expressed “shock”
at Turner’s “gross ignorance” on the subject of human rights in China.

In the interview, Turner praises the Chinese government for instituting
the one-child policy, saying that they were “wise” to do so. He went on
to make the claim that the Chinese government does not use “draconian”
measures to limit its population. Rather, he said, the government
employs non-coercive methods like tax penalties to “encourage” smaller
families.

When pressed, Turner admitted that he was “not intimately familiar with
everything,” but he did not amend his stance (the interview is available
on YouTube here.)

Colin Mason, who returned in March from a week of fact-finding in China,
accused Turner of naiveté. “The situation in China is just as bad now as
it was in 1979,” said Mason. “Which is to say, ham-handed coercion is
still prevalent. I cannot think of a better word than ‘draconian’ for
the policy that the Chinese are visiting upon their people.”

“Having just witnessed this terrible suffering,” Mason continued, “I’m
shocked and appalled that the founder of one of the nation’s leading
news corporations could possibly say something so uninformed. The fact
that he said it, authoritatively, on nationwide radio makes it all the
more inexcusable.”

Steven Mosher, PRI’s president and respected China expert, was just as
critical. “I’m completely convinced that the abuses that Colin reported
are of the exact same nature as the abuses I found in 1979 and that
PRI’s investigation found in 2001. As a leader in the news industry, Mr.
Turner should do his research more thoroughly before buying so quickly
into Chinese government myths.”

Imagelink is authored by lukeford.net, and used on this website according to the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.

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