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China embassy rejects insincere apology for offensive Swedish TV show

By Curtis Stone (People's Daily Online)    17:01, September 27, 2018

On Sept. 21, Sweden’s national broadcaster SVT broadcast the show “Svenska Nyheter,” which aired a racist program about tourists from China, depicting Chinese travelers as people who eat dogs and defecate in public, drawing backlash in China and around the world.

After the show aired, the Embassy of China in Sweden issued a statement criticizing the racist program and demanding an immediate apology. “We strongly condemn it, and have lodged a strong protest to SVT,” the Embassy said. “We urge SVT and the program to immediately give an apology.”

Afterward, Thomas Hall, the program manager of SVT, made a half-hearted attempt to put out the fire. However, as the Embassy pointed out in a statement on Sept. 25, Hall intentionally dodged the issue of the racial content. The embassy called the statement nothing but an excuse and an attempt to try to sidestep the issue. “We will never accept such an ‘apology,’” it said.

On Sept. 26, Hall issued another “apology.” However, it too was rejected, as the program manager of SVT once again failed to address the anti-China nature of the show and make a sincere apology to China and the Chinese people.

Now, the Embassy of China in Sweden is once again urging the Swedish broadcaster to apologize and make sure this never happens again.

In a statement published on Sept. 26, the Embassy criticized Hall for failing to reflect on the racist attack on China and the racial discrimination against Chinese. It also pointed out that Hall has still yet to reflect on and apologize for publishing a fake map of China, which portrayed China without the province of Taiwan and parts of Tibet.

The “insincere and hypocritical” apology, the statement explained, was merely an attempt to gloss over the program’s mistakes and skirt the issue of racism, and the Embassy once again urged SVT and program staff of the “Svenska Nyheter” show to stop making excuses and sincerely apologize to China and the Chinese people and to unequivocally reject racism.

(For the latest China news, Please follow People's Daily on Twitter and Facebook)(Web editor: Bianji, Wu Chengliang)

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