About ... the Craccum incident
If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's news: a group of organised Chinese student stole hundreds of University of Auckland's Craccum magazine yesterday morning, because there was a tiny (about 1/4 of an A4 Page) "Fa Lun Gong related" ad in the magazine.
They plan to tear down that page and return the rest of the magazine.
First I want to make my point very clear: I don't like Fa Lun Gong, I always feel disgraced of them, and I will never accept Fa Lun Gong as part of Chinese Culture.
So I totally agree the view of those fellow Chinese students.
BTW, if you don't agree with me, you are most likely a non-Chinese influenced by Fa Lun Gong's propaganda. Their propaganda skills are far beyond your expectation, even more skilled than Communist Party of China, the master of propaganda.
Just a simple example, Fa Lun Gong member claim that they are non-political, that's totally untrue. Fa Lun Gong is nothing but a political group. I personally talked to some of its members, they have absolutely no knowledge on any of their "spiritual pratices", apart from "how bad the communist regime is."
Those are not the Fa Lun Gong people you saw? I already told you about their propaganda skills. Oh and, I believe you've never been spammed by Fa Lun Gong? Well that's because they only spread politically driven spams in Chinese.
I can list another hundreds of reasons for why you shouldn't trust Fa Lun Gong, but it's not the point I want to talk about.
....
Although I may agree with my fellow students' views, I feel extremely offended by their action.
Before the Fa Lun Gong is outlawed in New Zealand, the group and its members entitle every right rest of us who live in this country enjoy, and that includes the right to express their views, freely.
And most importantly, for me, as a free person, regardless of my nationality, entitle to read stuffs that aren't censored to favour one point of view.
I lived in China, a country where everything in media must be approved by government's propaganda department for most of my life. I absolutely hated it, the reason is simple: I'm not a mentally retarded person who need others to tell me what is right or wrong, even what I have been told is actually true.
I'm not a computer whizz but in terms of bypass the Great Firewall of China, I have at least a master degree on it. I don't necessarily agree with some "anti-Chinese views" outside the "Greatwall", but I believe it's my right to have free access to them and make my own judgment.
So I treasure the free environment right here in New Zealand. I strongly believe that while everyone and every government entitles to have their own views, no one has the right to force others to accept one particular view by any means, including censorship.
I treat the incident as a form of media censorship - Chinese government removes materials that it doesn't want Chinese people to see; those people tear down the page that they don't want you and me to see.
Me and most of my friends in China yearn to have a environment free of media censorship, and yet my fellow countrymen are so eagar to build a new Great Wall of Censorship right here in this country!? I just cannot believe it.
What I have found really surprising is, the people who organised the stealing, were largely the same people who organised the protest to NZ Media's biased view on Tibet last Saturday(all organisation works happened on a Chinese BBS), while most of them have no comment on the heavy censorship in China.
So I take it as they like censorship, as long as it favours their view.
In my view, those students are no more than Chinese partriots. They believe in partriotism, the partriotism as in that famous quote made by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".
