The Chinese news agency has been booted out of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery after 57 years..The press gallery said Xinhua News Agency, the propaganda arm of China’s Communist Party, was stripped of membership not due to expulsion but a paperwork error..The embassy “neglected to send in their membership review form,” said Jordan Press, outgoing president of the gallery..“It was an administrative oversight that they were still on the membership list at the end of last year..“They were not expelled, they were not removed. They just simply did not file a review form.”.The Chinese embassy had no comment on the issue..Gallery rules restrict membership to publishers and broadcasters that “adhere to generally accepted journalistic principles and practices.”.Xinhua is state-run and is known as a propaganda agency for the People’s Republic that prompted pro-democracy demonstrators to vandalize its Hong Kong office in 2019..“The violent acts of the black-clad rioters have once again shown that only by stopping violence in accordance with the law would social order and public security be restored,” Xinhua said at the time..Founded by the Communist Party of China in 1935, Xinhua in recent dispatches praised an “ethnic policy” deemed genocidal by Canadian MPs, urged foreigners to “stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs” and hailed China’s “comprehensive green transformation.”.“There is no perfect democracy, only democracy that fits best,” Xinhua wrote in a March 4 report..The Ottawa Press Gallery granted Xinhua membership in 1964 at the request of then-Foreign Minister Paul Martin, Sr..Xinhua was granted membership in a diplomatic exchange with Maoist censors who allowed the Globe & Mail to open a bureau in Beijing..Press said if the agency wants to return they would have to submit an application form..The Department of National Defence in 2012 blacklisted Xinhua from going to military briefings on Parliament Hill..The agency that same year was accused of misusing its press credentials to maintain surveillance of Chinese dissidents in Canada and obtain details of a private meeting between the visiting Dalai Lama and then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper..Dave Naylor is the News Editor of the Western Standard.dnaylor@westernstandardonline.com.Twitter.com/nobby7694
