澳洲老外博客：Chinese protestors peaceful @ Melbourne Film Festival（推荐翻译）

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Chinese protestors peaceful @ Melbourne Film Festival
http://ozsoapbox.com/melbourne/chinese-protestors-peaceful-melbourne-film-festival/

Chinese protestors peaceful @ Melbourne Film Festival
Aug.08, 2009 in Melbourne

Ever since the Melbourne International Film Festival told China to shove it when they objected to them screening ‘The Ten Conditions of Love’ we’ve seen comical demand after demand from the Chinese government.

I rode into the city today prior the the screening not quite sure what to expect. We’d all seen the crazy numbers that amassed when Melbourne’s Chinese nationalists held a rally in Federation Square last year and the violence that went on between pro-tibet supporters and the rent-a-crowd.

Would there be thousands of protesters there?

Would somebody call in a bomb threat to the theatre before the film screened?

Was I going to get lynched for snooping around?

With so many asians running around would I be able to get a seat in a CBD Asian cafe for some roast barbecue pork?

These were all thoughts running through my mind as I pulled up outside the Melbourne Town Hall and began to lock up my bike.

It all started when China made an official request that Melbourne International Film Festival organisers pull the documentary on Rebiya Kadeer’s life. China insist the Kadeer is responsible for the riots in the Uighur region back in July, you know just like the Dali Lama is responsible every time anyone riots over Tibet.

Following the request denial China then made several calls to all of their directors with films featured in the film festival. Subsequently after talks on the phone two directors immediately pulled their films and when Kadeer was granted a visa later more films were pulled totalling six all up.

Obviously a few phonecalls and threats about your family disappearing is all it takes for Beijing to get what Beijing wants.

As film festival organisers went about finding replacements to fill in the time slots Chinese hackers (clearly at the bequest of their government) then began a DDOS campaign against the festival website. Taking the website down and purchasing tickets to fill up sessions, film organisers were then forced to close down the online ticket purchasing facility and request that people purchase tickets offline.

We even had our our ambassador to the foreign ministry in China “summoned” so he could cop an earful of dummy spitting.

The final attempt by the Chinese government to bully Australia into pandering to their political demands was the threat of severing the twenty nine year old sister city relationship Melbourne has with Tianjin.

Yeah because that’ll work. Half of Melbourne (myself included) have never even heard of Tianjin let alone the fact we have a sister city arrangement with them.

More worrying however was the revelation that there has been strong pressure from within the council to pull the movie.

    Mr Doyle has rejected the Chinese demands – as well as intense pressure from his own councillors to stop the screening of the controversial film.


Presumably these councillors are of Chinese origin and are perhaps left over from the John So days. Either way I find it worrying we’ve got officials running around the City of Melbourne council trying to censor movies in Australia solely for the political gain of China.

Like all their previous demands however, this mornings threat went largely unnoticed and ignored.

As I headed towards the town hall I was pleasantly surprised to see that in contrast to the mob that rocked up to the Tibet protest, this time around there were only a handful of protesters. With state and federal police on hand staying close to the line of film goers there was little chance of tensions erupting.

melbourne film festival chinese protestors

To their credit the protesters were very well behaved and non-disruptive. It was a peaceful protest and for that I commend them, although I’m not entirely sure what was going on with the guy dressed in the Chairman Mao suit on the end there.

There was a lot of media floating around and in particular an Asian woman reporter who had a crew following her around. I’m not sure what network they belonged to but I doubt it was local.

The political games China has played over the past month or so seems to have had the exact opposite effect they were going for. The line waiting to see the movie was massive and stretched around the block.

melbourne film festival queue

With seating capacity of 1500 I’m pretty sure the town hall would have had to of been at near full capacity.

No idea if the documentary was any good though. I was tempted to see if I could perhaps grab a ticket (it was announced a limited number would be sold about an hour prior to the screening) just to see if any ‘moles’ got into the theatre to disrupt the screening but decided against it.

You know, just in case some crazy national decided to detonate themselves or open fire inside… I mean there’s got to be someone left standing to write about it right?

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Valery

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Valery

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