-We all know that human rights and freedom of expression is being violated in several countries in this region of the world, Freemuse board member Ole Reitov said in a speech in Beijing Monday.

-Freemuse welcomes a dialogue with any regime and any religious interest group on the issue of music censorship, Mr. Reitov added.

Freemuse has requested a meeting with The Chinese Ministry of Culture to discuss China's well documented music censorship.

-What is interesting about censorship - as it is performed in China and neighbouring countries - is not necessarily the set of rules, which you can find in the criminal law, the broadcasting law and other regulations, Mr. Reitov stated.

-The interesting thing is how they are applied and how they are interpreted by the police, the administrators in the Ministries, the broadcasting administration and the publishing houses - and how the applications and interpretations can change radically according to a given political, religious or even trade related situation.

A founding member of Freemuse, Ole Reitov, has earlier documented music censorship in South Africa during apartheid. He was invited to Beijing within the framework of ASEF, the Asia-European Foundation in collaboration with Centre of Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art Development, Ministry of Culture, China.
The participants are media people and music researchers from Europe and Asia.

-We see the mild versions of censorship in broadcasting - music that is simply not played for one reason of the other - but look at the arguments behind it.

-We see more brutal versions of censorship of ethnic, political and cultural minorities in several Asian countries - including members of ASEF. This is a forum of distinguished researchers and scholars I hope some of you will start looking into the mechanisms and effects of music censorship in your own countries or other countries, Mr. Reitov said in his speech titled: Regimes as musical vampires & blood transfusions to traditional music.