Posts Tagged ‘Free speech’
Exporting censorship
From New Zealand Herald:
Dr Norman is outraged that members of a Chinese delegation were able to push him, hit him with an umbrella and rip a Tibetan flag from his grasp.He was protesting as Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived at Parliament greeted by a few dozen pro-China supporters.
Some of the group, believed to be Chinese security, took exception to Dr Norman waving a Tibetan flag and calling for democracy.The MP brushed away attempts to have an umbrella placed in front of him, then clashed with security guards as they pulled the flag from his grasp and threw it on the ground.
He yelled they could suppress freedom of speech in China, but not in New Zealand.
The treatment Russel Norman has received today on the parliament ground is absolutely appalling. It is no more than a shameless attempt of silencing a dissentient on the land where it suppose to have a freedom of speech. I acknowledge that entourage members do have a duty of protecting VIPs, however, after seeing the unedited footage of the incident, it is clear that the response from Chinese entourage is disproportionate. Norman had neither had any physical contact with anyone nor vocally provoked such response - well unless "free Tibet" counts as a provocation.
However, I'm not really surprised on how Chinese entourage responded. The novel yet extremely childish way of using umbrella to cover things that Chinese officials do not want to see is not new. The first time that such practice brought to the attention of international media is on the 20th anniversary of Tian'anmen Massacre, where plain cloth officers used umbrella to block foreign journalists from filming on Tian’anmen Square. Since then plain cloth with umbrella has become somewhat a standard practice in any occasion where there is a potential of protests.
What shocked me is how Chinese government is exporting such censorship practice to a foreign country with little or no hesitation. I’m not a fan of green party, but I applaud the fact that they never abused their parliamentary privileges – they protested peacefully on every occasion where a Chinese official is visiting. I also have to say that a lone protestor, sometimes also need to confront with a large pro-Chinese crowd, is stirring but also looked a bit stupid. But don’t get me wrong, they have the right to be stupid, New Zealand didn’t take their right to be stupid away from them, so why should Chinese have such right?
Seeing that Chinese entourage used same way of covering up people as they did back in their own country, is a solid reminder that we simply cannot ignore the pain of others in a country on another hemisphere, just like we cannot let a criminal run loose til the date that he is actually hurting YOU.
Rebiya in NZ
I went to Rebiya Kadeer's speech in Auckland. Her visit was organised by the Green Party and Amnsty Internaional in NZ, two well-kown "anti-chinese" organisation among politically minded Chinese students here. However, I was there to hear another side of the story, not to protest, and I did gain some knowledge on her story and position on a range of issues.
But I was more interested in the role of Chinese government in regard to leaders like the Dalai Lama and Mrs Kadeer. Kadeer was not a well-known figure before the unrest in Xinjiang in July this year, before that if you refer that name to a Chinese, he or she is more likely to have very little or no knowledge on who she is.
People sometimes joke that Chinese government regularly award two awards that are even more important than the Nobel, namely GFW's Web Choice award and Chinese Government Recommended Award - if you know a website is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, you know it's a website worth to visit. Similarily, if Chinese government blames someone, you know he or she is worth to listen to.
A state like China needs enemies - if you go back in history, at any point of time, Chinese government always propoganda at least one enemy of the state to its people - the Dalai Lama, oversea chinese democracy movement, "oversea anti-chinese forces" and so on. This is a bit like Bush administration, it's the only way to divert people's attention.
However, for the speech itself, I was in fact quite disappointed. It was a good introduction for her positions on some issues, but nothing else was there but more of a blame game. I still think that her popularity is largely due to the help for the communist government, in real life, she's no way near the Dalai Lama.
Dates not allowed on Google (.cn)'s Calendar
As you may know, Google's Chinese localised version is heavily censored. When the search results contain pages you are not allowed to see, Google.cn usually returns a notice on the result page : "据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示" (Some results are omitted as restrited by local laws and policies).
One curious Chinese bloger wondered, how many days in a year are outlawed by "local laws"? He worte a script and found out that, out of 366 days, 11 of them will result the censorship notice on the search result page, these are:
* 13 January
* 31 May
* 4 June
* 13 June
* 20 June
* 25 June
* 30 June
* 5 July
* 19 September
* 13 Octorber
* 18 December
The rationale behind some of these censored dates are quite obvious, like 4 June is the date symbolises Tiananmen Square Massacre and the recent riots in China's Uyghur dominated Xinjiang Region started on 5 July.
However, even as a politically minded Chinese, I don't quite get why the rest of dates are considered "sensitive". I checked Wikipedia, there are some past events related to China, however, most of them are quite normal and can be hardly considered as sensitive events.
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. Read more
