Newspaper Sues ‘High Handed’ Printer|In Quarrel Over Falun Gong Article

VANCOUVER, B.C. (CN) - China's fight with Falun Gong has led to a bizarre reverberation in British Columbia Supreme Court. The Post Group, publisher of the South Asia Post, claims its printer, Epoch Press, refused to print an article that criticized Falun Gong because Epoch's president Frank Cui practices Falun Gong. The Post claims the Cui demanded that it "change the headline and remove a quote from the Chinese government in the article or he would not print [the] job to be run." Faced with an imminent deadline and "the prospect of breaching dozens of advertising contracts," the Post said it caved in.

The complaint continues: "At some point later that same day [Jan. 7, 2009] the demands made by Cui escalated to the point where Cui demanded that the entire article be substituted with an article written and authored by representatives of the Falun Gong but falsely published as an independent news article. ... The publisher refused to comply with the demands."

The Post says Cui's "high handed and malicious" demands forced it to find a new printer, and that "the process to convert over to a new printer took nearly a month, during which time 10 editions of the newspapers were not run."

The Post demands punitive damages for breach of contract, deceit, interference, and theft by conversion. It is represented by Kent Wiebe.

Falun Gong is a form or mediation, or religion, that the Chinese government, which fears mass movements of any sort that it cannot direct, has ruthlessly suppressed.

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