The EU has attempted to defend the fact that it allowed the communist Chinese government to censor a letter it wrote before it was published in a Chinese newspaper, erasing a sentence that stated the coronavirus originated in China.
The letter, co-written by the bloc’s 27 ambassadors, was published in China’s English-language newspaper China Daily on Tuesday. However, the EU agreed to allow censors to remove the sentence, which stated “But the outbreak of the coronavirus, in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months…”
“China has state-controlled media. There is censorship, that’s a fact,” EU foreign affairs spokesperson Virginie Battu-Henriksson told reporters in an attempt to justify bowing to the Chinese censors.
Henriksson suggested that the EU reluctantly agreed to the amendment because it was better than not being able to communicate with a Chinese audience on ‘key EU issues’, including climate change, human rights and the pandemic response.
It is the second time in the space of two weeks that the EU has rolled over for Chinese censorship, having previously softened criticism of the communist regime in a report documenting how governments have pushed “disinformation” about the coronavirus pandemic.
The European Union was set to issue the report until Chinese officials “quickly contacted the European Union’s representatives in Beijing to try to kill the report,” according to two diplomats. The EU then “diluted the focus on China, a vital trading partner.”
German conservative politician Norbert Roettgen criticised the EU’s actions, stating “I am shocked not once but twice.”
“First the EU ambassadors generously adopt Chinese narratives and then the EU representative on top accepts Chinese censorship of the joint op-ed.” he added.
“This story beggars belief,” another EU diplomat told Politico, asking “What is the point in letting yourself be censored?”
The source urged that it was an “embarrassment” for the EU, adding: “The cost of taking a stand and defending what you believe in would have been very small.”
In a speech to mark him taking the oath of office, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that the west is subjecting itself to “suicide waves” of decline in the form of self-inflicted economic wounds, mass migration and an obsession with identity politics.
Orbán’s conservative Fidesz party swept to victory in the election last month with another two-thirds majority, despite a massive effort by globalist interests to derail his candidacy.
During a speech in parliament, Orbán cautioned that the continent faced perilous times ahead.
“Everything that has happened since 2020 points in one direction: Europe and the Hungarian people in it have entered an age of danger,” said Orbán. “The decade began with the coronavirus epidemic and continued with the war. The sanctions from the war brought an economic downturn.”
“The war and sanctions policy caused an energy crisis, and U.S. interest rate hikes brought an age of inflation,” he added.
The Hungarian leader went on to lament that Europe was entering an “age of economic downturn” and a worsening mass migration problem.
Orbán said we are now witnessing the “suicide waves of the Western world” characterized by the replacement of Christianity with a vacuous cult of identity politics.
“Such is the program of the great European population exchange, the essence of which is to replace the missing Christian children with migrants. Such an experiment is a program of gender madness and a liberal Europe that transcends nation-states and Christianity, and puts nothing in their place,” said Orbán.
“They forget that man alone can never be free, only lonely,” he added.
Orbán expressed hope that his own people could fight back, “because the Hungarians were carved out of hard wood, so we stubbornly resist the decline.”
As we previously highlighted, the EU imposed sanctions on Hungary, directly afflicting the poor, because Hungarians dared to vote for a leader the globalists don’t like.
EU Head Says Ukraine “Belong[s] To Us” As She Announces TOTAL BAN On RT and Sputnik News Broadcasts
“They are one of us and we want them in.”
Published
3 months ago
on
28 February, 2022
Steve Watson
Screenshot
Last week we reported that it seemed increasingly likely that countries in Europe would shut down RT’s broadcasts, labelling the channel ‘Russian propaganda’. Now it has been confirmed by the European Commission president.
Ursula von der Leyen announced Sunday that the EU will ban not only RT (Russia Today), but also Sputnik TV broadcasts. It is not known at this time whether the ban will extend to the websites of the networks.
In what she admitted was an “unprecedented” step, von der Leyen declared “we will ban in the European Union the Kremlin’s media machine,” claiming that the networks are spreading “harmful disinformation.”
“The state owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union,” the Commission head proclaimed, adding that the EU is further “developing tools to ban toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”
In other words, only Western EU bureaucrat approved media broadcasts will be available for consumption throughout the bloc from now on.
The announcement came simultaneously with a declaration to shut down EU airspace for all Russian aircraft:
Second, we will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU.
The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war.
We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe. pic.twitter.com/7RcPEn6E14