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.

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.

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.

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".