College students who support Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists have been “stunned” to find themselves harassed in other countries by counterprotesters aligned with the government in Beijing.
“The purpose of the protest is to show we will protest for free speech no matter what,” Drew Pavlou, a student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, said Tuesday. “We will never be intimidated by violence.”
Pavlou, a 20-year-old critic of Chinese Communist human rights abuses, has been at the center of a campus controversy with geopolitical overtones. He organized a protest last week that drew online threats and ultimately a group of roughly 300 pro-Beijing demonstrators, in an echo of the outbursts that have rocked Hong Kong in recent months, which calls attention to China’s broader network of foreign influence operations.
“The leader of the Chinese nationalist students … messaged me personally the night before the protest and warned me that I would be hurt if I went ahead with it,” Pavlou tweeted after the protests last Wednesday.
Pavlou organized the protest, along with Jack Yiu, with multiple issues in mind. He wanted to denounce the Chinese Communist repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, the violence against Hong Kong protesters outraged by pressure from the mainland government, and his alma mater. The university hosts a Confucius Institute, which works “to promote the learning of Chinese language and culture,” as the school put it, but sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Education. U.S. officials regard the institutes as important platforms for Chinese Communist propaganda.
The scene turned ugly when a Chinese student grabbed the megaphone that Pavlou was using to lead a “Xi Jinping has got to go” chant, per a video released by the protest organizer. “CCP thugs sprayed what looks like urine on peaceful pro Hong Kong students,” Pavlou added in a tweet releasing another video.
The incident drew praise from a top Chinese diplomat. “The consulate general attaches great importance to the safety of Chinese students, affirms the spontaneous patriotic behavior of Chinese students, resolutely opposes the words and deeds of any separatist countries, and opposes the use of these events to create the opposition between Chinese and Hong Kong students and incite anti-China sentiment,” Xu Jie, the consul-general in Brisbane, said the day after the protests.
The controversy is no isolated incident. Chinese diplomats pressured Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand to cancel an event commemorating the Tiananmen Square crackdown, newly published emails show. And Hong Kong pro-democracy students at another New Zealand school likewise drew the ire of pro-Beijing counterparts.
“The proposed law in Hong Kong could see the end of the city as we know it and our individual freedom, but I was stunned when people in New Zealand are also trying to shut down our freedom of expression,” Serena Lee, a Hong Kong native studying at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, told reporters after she was filmed being shoved.
Xu’s statement drew a rebuke from Australia’s top diplomat, who instructed Chinese officials to respect free speech rights in Australia.
“The government would be particularly concerned if any foreign diplomatic mission were to act in ways that could undermine such rights, including by encouraging disruptive or potentially violent behavior,” Foreign Minister Marise Payne said.
Pavlou is more troubled by the posture of authorities on campus. Xu, the consul-general, was given an honorary professorship at the University of Queensland last month. That partnership resulted in Peter Høj, the university’s vice chancellor and president, receiving an award from a senior Chinese official in 2015.
Pavlou sees that network of relationships has resulted in university leadership being “deeply compromised by CCP money,” as he has accused the university of being slow to respond to threats he received online. The student, who is organizing another protest for Wednesday, also faulted the administration for refusing to allow the demonstration to take place near a plaque honoring the Tiananmen Square victims.
“We have been working with Queensland police to ensure the planned student-initiated protest this week goes ahead in a lawful and respectful manner,” a university spokesperson told the South China Morning Post.
