BEIJING (AP) - In their most brazen electronic hacking yet, supporters of the outlawed Falun Gong movement have staged a "TV hijacking" by interrupting transmissions on a satellite system that broadcasts to every corner of China, the government asserted Tuesday night.
Using its official Xinhua News Agency, the government released an extraordinary 1,100-word dispatch about the latest hacking incident, saying it had traced the illegal transmissions over the Sino Satellite, or Sinosat, system to a pirate broadcast operation in Taipei, Taiwan.
"Why do some Falun Gong die-hards dare to blemish modern civilization in such a barefaced manner?" Xinhua said in an accompanying editorial.
Falun Gong has made a practice in recent months of hacking into local TV feeds and broadcasts, often broadcasting pirate transmissions to tout the benefits of the group and persuade the citizenry that Chinese authorities have treated it unfairly. China says such transmissions have "disrupted the public order" and go against international communications standards.
Xinhua said the latest hacking, which it called a "TV hijacking," began Sept. 9 and had affected signals of a service designed to enable remote villages across the country to see broadcasts from China Central Television, or CCTV, the leading government-run network.
The television break-ins have embarrassed the government, which calls the protest videos "reactionary propaganda" and says they threaten social stability. In that spirit, China's national news also dedicated three minutes of its newscast Tuesday night to the latest hacking.
Officials said they were sure the hacking originated in Taiwan, and called upon its government to help track down the culprits.
"We've utilized a wide range of technical means to monitor and analyze the hijacking signals and made an accurate positioning of the hijacking source. Specialists are completely certain," said Liu Lihua, director of the radio bureau of the Ministry of Information Industry.
In Taipei, Taiwan's government did not immediately respond to the accusation.
The commandeering of the satellite signal also interrupted transmission of the China Education TV Station and some provincial-level TV stations, Xinhua said, and in some cases cut off television entirely for viewers in some rural and mountainous areas.
"This seriously damaged the rights and interests of the audience and affected the normal education order of schools and as well as the learning activities of students," Zhang Tianlin, vice president of the education station, was quoted as saying.
The dispatch also blamed Li Hongzhi, the U.S.-based spiritual leader of Falun Gong, which the government outlawed in 1999.
Xinhua quoted Wang Xiuli, a student of Weichang No. 1 Middle School in northern China's Hebei province, as saying she was angered by the disturbance. She uses Sinosat to access televised long-distance education lectures.
An official with the Taiwan Affairs Office, which handles relations with the island's government, said Taiwan authorities must track down and punish the hackers. "The Taiwan side is responsible for stopping the criminal activity immediately," said the official, whom Xinhua did not name.
Though Taiwan operates as a sovereign nation, Beijing considers it part of China and, indeed, referred to the hacking as originating in "Taiwan province."
Last week, 15 people convicted of breaking into a cable television system to show videos protesting China's ban on Falun Gong were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. The sentences were among the longest yet imposed in the campaign to crush the spiritual movement, which had millions of followers before it was banned.
The group was convicted in the northeastern city of Changchun of breaking anti-cult laws and damaging broadcasting equipment. The March 5 broadcasts in Changchun and nearby Songyuan marked the start of the hacking campaign.
Thousands of Falun Gong followers have been detained. Most are freed after a few months, though a government official told The Associated Press earlier this year that nearly 1,300 had been sentenced to prison.
Falun Gong activists abroad say hundreds of supporters have been killed in detention. Chinese officials deny killing detainees but say some have died in hunger strikes or from refusing medical help.