Hizbollah's al-Manar television channel, branded a terrorist organization by the United States, will no longer be available on European satellites from Monday, media regulators said Thursday.
The announcement came at a meeting of European Union broadcasting regulators in Brussels, where national watchdogs from the 25-nation bloc agreed to step up action against TV broadcasts which incite hatred or promote racism and xenophobia.
Last year, a French court banned al-Manar from a satellite owned by France's Eutelsat because its broadcasts were deemed anti-Semitic and a potential threat to public order.
Dutch regulators discovered that a satellite owned by New Skies Satellites was carrying al-Manar and has ordered the company to stop doing so, because the channel did not have the required Dutch license.
'We saw that al-Manar was being transmitted by New Sky Satellite (NSS). We assessed that al-Manar does not have a Dutch license ... and NSS will now take al-Manar from its satellite,' Jan van Cuilenburg, head of the Dutch Media Authority, told Reuters.
'As of Monday al-Manar will no longer be available on any European satellites.'
[...]
But Lebanon's parliament has criticized the French ban on al-Manar, saying the ruling showed the reach of "Zionist pressure" on France.
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Friday, March 18, 2005
Hezbollah TV banned in Europe...but why?
Contradictory information in the article - France banned Al-Manar because of racism, but the remaining Dutch satellite provider says it was a licensing issue. So are the Dutch using the license problem as an excuse to save face among their Muslim population who would accuse them of caving to Zionist pressure?