Racism or criticism of China? Debate on free speech in Australia arises amid anti-Asian violence

When Australian artist Luke Cornish launched his latest exhibition "Don't Shoot the Messenger" in Canberra last month, he billed the collection of 54 stencil works as a commentary on authoritarianism, protest and injustice in countries including the United States, China and Australia.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

But he questioned the removal of the two exhibits relating to Uygurs and the social credit system, pointing out that his other works at the exhibition highlighted the mistreatment of Aboriginal people in Australia and the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.

The ANU International Students' Department, which represents international students within the student union, said it had asked the gallery to remove the Batman artwork as it had made some students "feel unsafe" on campus, although it had not requested the removal of the other artworks that were taken down.

"Racism and discrimination is unacceptable and it will always be," the group said in a statement on Facebook.

A spokesperson for aMBUSH Gallery, which is not affiliated with ANU, said the Batman artwork had been removed due to the "unintended hurt caused to the Chinese community", but the two other pieces were taken down as they formed part of the same series and the gallery had "acted quickly and took down the series without thinking more broadly about how that might be perceived".

Others have argued claims of censorship have conflated criticism of controversial material with suppression.

"When editors decide to not publish a piece, it is not censorship, but editorial choice," said Yun Jiang, a scholar at the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU. "When people are criticising each other's writings or protesting against certain actions, it is not censorship but them exercising their freedom of speech."

Australia's Education Minister Alan Tudge waded into the debate on Tuesday when he accused editors of a university newspaper of forgetting the importance of freedom of speech in an "era of woke culture", and said suggestions that an article was taken down to appease Beijing was "deeply concerning".

Tudge was referring to the University of Sydney's student newspaper Honi Soit, which retracted a report about the alleged involvement of a number of academics in research with potential military applications in China last week. It cited the "harm caused to them, the Chinese community, and to our readers" and the need to "actively combat Western imperialist and xenophobic biases presented in mainstream media".

Amid online accusations that the Honi Soit's editors were "conflating racism against Chinese people with criticism of Beijing", the editors said that while the article contained no factual errors and had not accused any academic of wrongdoing, they had taken the decision for the "safety of the academics mentioned" and had acted without external pressure.

"At no time were we pressured by the university, or other individuals or groups, including the Chinese Communist Party or its supporters, in this decision," they said. "Speculation to the contrary is false and misleading."

Australia's Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is currently undertaking an inquiry into allegations of foreign interference at Australian universities, including claims of intimidation of critics of Beijing.

DRAWING DISTINCTIONS

Australia, like other countries, has seen a surge in reports of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic.

In February last year, the Australian Human Rights Commission received more reports of racial discrimination than at anytime during the previous 12 months, with reports subsequently returning to "the high end" of their normal range. In an ANU survey of more than 3,000 people carried out last year, nearly 85 per cent of respondents with Asian heritage reported experiencing at least one instance of discrimination between January and October.

Mobo Gao, a social sciences professor at the University of Adelaide, said it could be difficult to draw distinctions between criticising or scrutinising the Chinese government and people of Chinese descent.

"It is a simple fact but hard for people to realise that there is no such entity as 'the Chinese,'" said Gao. "There are citizens of other countries or areas who are of Chinese ethnicity who may identify, to various extents, with China, again to various extents, defend the PRC and even the CCP. Some of those who complain about racism against Chinese may have nothing to do with China. There are Chinese from mainland China who are very critical of China."

Gao said that commentary on China should treat neither the CCP, the PRC nor Chinese citizens as "one object".

The Graduate Student Association at the University of Melbourne said last week it was considering taking "appropriate action" against the student publication, describing its article as "discriminatory".

Belle Lim, president of the Council of International Students Australia, said she was concerned such commentary "may fuel marginalisation and racism against Chinese students, on top of the recorded anti-Asian attacks since the start of Covid-19 pandemic".

Jiang of ANU acknowledged there was also a problem of people "wanting to stay silent and wary to speak out due to different pressures" from both critics and supporters of Beijing.

"Apart from CCP coercion of individuals and their family members, there is also targeted harassment of people who engage in the Australia-China debate," she said. "I heard some have received death threats due to their views on China."

Cornish, who said he received blowback from people "offended by all of the work that I had made that questioned human rights violations by the CCP" as well as those who appeared genuinely concerned about Sinophobia, called for both racism and censorship to be addressed.

"There are racist people in Australia, as in every country, that promote racism, and this is a real concern that needs to be addressed," he said. "On the other end of the spectrum there are people in power that use this to their advantage to avoid questions of human rights abuses, silencing any criticism of the issue. It's no different from being accused of anti-Semitism for questioning Israeli war crimes."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.