Saturday, 17 February 2018

22. SPECIAL LEGISLATION FOR THE OCCASION

Politicians in The Hague however were not charmed by tv-programming from the high seas. They rushed through the so-called “anti-REM-wet”, legislation making broadcasts from structures on the Dutch Continental shelf illegal. That became possible because of a UN-resolution concerning the rights of coastal states over their part of the Continental shelf. This led professor Eric Suy, a resident of Knokke-Heist (Belgium), to publish a study in 1965 about the “Volkenrechtelijke aspekten van de REM-affaire”. From 1974 to 1983 Suy was Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs at the United Nations.

In the meantime, in December 1964, the owners of the REM-island, announced that its TV operations had been sold to a British company, High Seas Television Ltd. Ownership of the REM-island itself was transferred to a Panamanian company. But it was all to no avail.


On the morning of December 17th 1964 a flotilla of boats accompanied by police helicopters arrived at the REM-island. Dozens of police officers disembarked, and at 7 minutes past 9, Radio Noordzee went off the air in the middle of Anneke Grönloh’s “Paradiso”. 

More of AJ's radio- and other anecdotes.

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