After 20 years, on 14th September, Australian Politian Pauline Hanson, delivered her Senate Maiden Speech to the Federal Parliament once again since 19961. Indeed, the controversial immigration policy that she pointed out towards Muslims and Asians had raised hot debate among the Australian media and society. This demonstrated Australia as a highly demarcated country, that members of parliament are able to represent their people and express their opinion to the government publically, with freedom of speech and human rights they have. Mean while, human rights issues of the biggest trading partner of Australia, China, has sparked grave concern.
On 14th September, 5 Hong Kong Journalists were violently treated and detained by the Chinese police in the “protest village” of Wukan, Guangdong province of China.
Wukan was seen as a “democracy experiment” after widespread protests in 2011, which the village was allowed to elect its own leaders. Protests again erupted this year after village chief Lin Zuluan was detained by police under suspicion of taking bribes. Villagers held 85 days of demonstrations calling for his release since June 2016. A court in Foshan sentenced Lin Zuluan to three years and one month in jail last Thursday for taking bribes and accepting bribes as a non-state employee2.
3 in the morning on 13th September, hundreds of police crushed into the village. Protesters waved flags and threw stones to the police, while police answered with rubber bullets and tear gas, villagers were injured and 13 of them were arrested for spreading rumours, inciting mobs and disrupting public order.
5 journalists from Hong Kong newspapers Ming Pao6, the South China Morning Post7 (SCMP), and news website HK018 were detained by the Chinese police for 5 hours.
According to interviews with the 2 Ming Pao journalist, they said that the police walked up and slapped them for no reason. One of the journalist shoes was loosen during the crush, yet the police did not allow the journalist to pick his shoes back.
While journalist of SCMP was conducting an interview with the villagers, 2 dozens of police broke into the house and arrested him for stealing.
He claimed that this phone rang right before the police broke into the house and was believed that his phone was tracked for his location by the police.
Journalists were sent back to Sheunzhang and were back to Hong Kong after spending 5 hours in the police office, they were forced to sign an agreement for stop investigating in Wukan as well.
The key word “Wukang” has been disabled on the internet of China.