Or threaten to do so until the University of Queensland sacks whoever it needs to to wash out the CCP poison. Via The Australian:
The University of Queensland is going to extraordinary lengths to silence its most effective critic, a 20-year-old philosophy student who has campaigned against the university’s tight links with the Chinese Communist Party.
Drew Pavlou came to public attention in July last year when, while leading a protest in support of Hong Kong democracy activists, he was assaulted by men who gave every impression of being heavies working for the Chinese state.
He then was targeted by a torrent of online hate and death threats from patriotic Chinese students. China’s consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, praised the violence, drawing a rebuke from Foreign Minister Marise Payne. Pavlou decided to seek a protection order against the consul-general through the courts.
Pavlou’s safety was threatened further when China’s state media vilified him, in effect giving official blessing to patriotic thuggery. He was no longer safe on campus.
How has the university responded to these events, surely one of the most worrying assaults on free speech?
None of the pro-Beijing students or the thugs who assaulted Pavlou has been disciplined. Xu, whom UQ had appointed an adjunct professor, appears to be as welcome as ever at the university.
Instead, irritated by Pavlou’s robust criticism, pranks and sarcasm, UQ seems to have decided to intimidate him into silence.
In February, Pavlou posted a mock Facebook announcement of a forthcoming “UQ Confucius Institute Panel: Why Uyghurs Must Be Exterminated”. A bit of undergraduate humour? Not for the mandarins at UQ.
University lawyers Clayton Utz wrote a letter to Pavlou that itself reads like a prank. It accused him of “making false statements” because, in fact, the Confucius Institute has no involvement with “the alleged event”. There follows a page and a half listing the rules and by-laws it claims he has violated, and ends menacingly: if he fails to remove the post and will not agree to refrain from making “false and misleading” statements, then the university “reserves the right to commence proceedings”.
A hostile foreign power has taken control of QLD’s leading university and it is now threatening the life not just of free speech but the very lives of students themselves.
This goes far beyond any acceptable behaviour by a public institution and is in open violation of Australian community standards if not law.
The Federal Government must intervene by threatening to withdraw funding unless the university:
- sacks the VC and/or puts in a program of management cleansing of CCP elements;
- reaffirms its commitment to free speech;
- boots the Confucius Institute from campus;
- apologises to Mr Pavlou and offers compensation.
Sure, it sets an uncomfortable precedent. But UQ has already gone far beyond uncomfortable in its CCP embrace. This is a kind of market failure and the Government is in its rights to restore community standards.
Is QLD and its leading university a part of the CCP autocracy or part of the Australian liberal democracy?
There is no grey area.
