Breaking: Chinese TV convicted for broadcasting forced confessions in UK

[6 July 2020] Today, the UK’s TV-regulator Ofcom found China Global Television Network (CGTN) guilty on all counts (privacy and unfair treatment) concerning an investigation launched after a complaint by former UK journalist Peter Humphrey. The complaint, filed on 23 November 2018, outlined a series of violations of UK broadcasting law by CGTN for airing his forced TV confessions. In recent years, CGTN has broadcast many similar confessions not only in the UK but also in Europe, the US, Canada and others. However, this is the first time that a media regulator has found the Chinese Party-State TV station guilty of broadcasting forced confessions.

We have prepared a backgrounder, including a detailed timeline, on this and all the many other complaints filed against CGTN here. Decisions on several other complaints are expected soon.  

 

Safeguard Defenders welcomes the decision of the Office of Communications (Ofcom), UK’s media regulator, which has found CGTN guilty of violations on all counts investigated concerning two broadcasts of forced TV confessions by Peter Humphrey. It furthermore welcomes that Ofcom has deemed those violations serious, and will now impose statutory sanctions (to be decided in a separate process).

Ofcom’s Adjudication (Final Decision) document can be downloaded here: 

Document

Adjudication, Final Decision - Peter Humphrey.pdf

 

Announced on Monday 6 July 2020, Ofcom’s decision to sanction CGTN comes more than 18 months after Peter Humphrey’s complaint in November 2018. That complaint covered two so-called “confessions” and “interviews”, broadcast on 27 August 2013 and 14 July 2014. Both were forced and false and obtained under duress by Chinese police in collaboration with CCTV journalists.

The footage, circulated on Chinese national television, was later edited and broadcast by CGTN in English in many countries, including the UK, the victim's home country.

"First, I want to express my relief that the facts that I exposed and the truth behind the broadcasts of my so called 'confessions' were accurately scrutinized by the Office of Communications," Peter Humphrey told Safeguard Defenders. "I appreciate the fact that Ofcom’s view is that the breaches of the Code’s rules 7.1, which states that ‘broadcasters must avoid unjust or unfair treatment of individuals or organisations in programmes’ and 8.1, which orders that ‘any infringement of privacy in programmes, or in connection with obtaining material included in programmes, must be warranted’) are ‘serious’."

Peter Dahlin, director of Safeguard Defenders welcomed the decision by Ofcom to sanction CGTN. As a victim himself of China's forced TV confessions, Dahlin said that the organization will continue its efforts to have Chinese media stop the practice of broadcasting forced confessions:

“We’re glad our efforts to help Peter Humphrey expose the truth of this practice were successful. We’re now expecting an exemplary sanction from Ofcom in direction of CGTN. Such broadcast not only constitute a breach of the UK’s Broadcasting Code, but also a serious violation of the fundamental right to a fair trial. We hope CGTN will be held accountable in every country it broadcasts such images, and that those working with CGTN will realize how dangerous it can be to collaborate with a media that serves as a propaganda organ for a political party,” said Dahlin.

 

Proof of coercion and active collaboration between CCTV/CGTN and Chinese Police provided by CGTN itself

In its assessment of whether Peter Humphrey was subjected to an “unjust or unfair treatment” as well as of whether an “unwarranted infringement of privacy” was perpetrated by the media, Ofcom notably focused on the steps taken by CCTV to obtain “informed consent” from Peter Humphrey. Attempting to prove that it did take such measures, the broadcaster itself provided two handwritten messages to Ofcom, allowing the media to conduct interviews. In one of those messages, Ofcom found the following sentence:

“I have been told by the PSB that the purpose of this interview is to obtain an outcome of our case which will be favourable and lenient."

In Ofcom’s view, “this clearly implied that failing to consent to the interview would contribute to an outcome which was not ‘favourable and lenient’ for Mr. Humphrey, and this information was in the possession of the Licensee.”

Additionally, Ofcom considered that the fact that Mr. Humphrey was confessing to offences in advance of trial and in the presence of those holding him in custody was sufficient to create “substantial doubt as to whether his consent was genuine and informed.”

After viewing the photos of those “messages of consent” (which were sent to him by Ofcom), Peter Humphrey responded that

“the fact that CCTV has obtained two ‘consent’ documents from confidential Public Security Bureau (PSB) interrogation files from a file that is reported to be sealed by the PSB as state secrets, and which even I and my defence lawyers have been unpermitted to access, says a lot about CCTV's collaboration with the PSB and China’s police state.”

“After my release, I asked our former defence lawyers Mr. Wang Zhendong and Mr. Zhai Jian, to provide me with copies of our case documents and Mr. Wang told me that the case file was sealed as a state secret and that he had been ordered to destroy his firm’s (Dacheng Law Office) copies of any documents. Yet, CCTV is mysteriously able to access the PSB files. This situation demonstrates the intimate relationship and collusion between CCTV and the PSB and the pernicious and illegal nature of this collusion.”

 

CGTN’s lies to Ofcom exposed thanks to other Chinese State/Party media

In their desperate attempt to defend themselves against the obvious breach of founding principles of journalism and journalistic ethics, CGTN falsely claimed that the first “interview”, in 2013, was only led by journalists, including a female CCTV journalist. She was used as a witness in their response to the Ofcom inquiry, to confirm that “no police officers asked questions of Mr. Humphrey in the interview, and that the police did not provide [them] with a script."

Information supplied by Peter Humphrey showed that news articles by Chinese media - media also owned by CCTV, like China National Radio - [1], specifically mentions that a police officer were asking the questions, interrogating Peter Humphrey. 

It is now irrefutable that the so-called “interview of Peter Humphrey” was in fact a police interrogation. It was PSB’s Inspector Ding Zhidong who read out questions from a sheet on a clipboard that were exclusively designed to make Peter Humphrey incriminate himself and confess to crimes that he had not committed. Trapped in a cage, cuffed to a chair, and sedated, Humphrey tried to navigate between saying something that would get him out of there and something that would not incriminate himself for crimes that he had not committed. Ofcom took clear note in its Final Adjudication (decision) document to point out that Peter Humphrey provided evidence that countered CGTN’s repeated claim that police did not ask questions, and showed CGTN as intentionally lying to Ofcom during this investigation.

Additionally, CGTN claimed that the “CCTV journalist involved confirmed that Mr. Humphrey did not appear to them to be in distress or under duress.”

Although this point was not addressed by Ofcom, Safeguard Defenders was able to find images on Chinese media websites of a similar cage to the one described by Peter Humphrey to the organisation. In pictures below, similar background (and shadows) can be observed in the case involving a Chinese woman who was filmed by Chinese television. Yet, CGTN argued that it did not have reason to believe that Peter Humphrey was in distress.

Snapshots of an unkown Chinese woman detained in a cage (left) and of Peter Humphrey’s first “confessions” (right). The shadows of the bars can be seen behind Peter Humphrey.