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.”

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