‘Free Speech Disaster’: Australia Fines Activist for Tiananmen Square Massacre Sign

A court in Brisbane, Australia, upheld a fine of upwards of 3,000 Australian dollars (nearly $2,000) on Tuesday against anti-Chinese regime activist Drew Pavlou on the grounds that holding a sign protesting the Tiananmen Square Massacre near a shopping mall amounted to “advertising … without permission.”

Pavlou, a 24-year-old activist who regularly protests communist China’s human rights atrocities, held up a sign reading “Nothing happened on June 4, 1989, change my mind” near the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane in May 2022.

June 4 is the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which the Chinese Communist Party responded to a wave of peaceful protests demanding an end to communism in Beijing by sending tanks into throngs of student protesters.

The Chinese government rapidly began hiding evidence of killings and no universally agreed-upon death toll for the episode exists, but Western diplomats reportedly estimated that the government killed at least 10,000 people during the wave of repression that began on that day in 1989.

https://twitter.com/DrewPavlou/status/1709009051064074303

The legal proceeding — one of several the activist is facing after becoming vocal against the Chinese Communist Party — follows years of concerns that Australia has allowed the Communist Party to silence free and legal expression within its borders, as well as influence politicians and legislative proceedings at a higher level.

Pavlou reportedly chose the location near the Queen Street Mall as it is on Adelaide Street – on the same street as the Chinese government’s consulate in Brisbane. Both he and his attorney assert that the Australian legal system is fining him for political speech protested by Australian law, apparently in an attempt to placate the Chinese Communist Party.

The sign, Pavlou insisted, could not have possibly amounted to “advertising” materials as he was not selling anything, and the police officers who fined him did so after he responded to their demands for him to no longer display the message by holding the sign up in such a way as it appeared blank.

The judicial authority tasked with Pavlou’s appeal against the fine, Magistrate Michael Holohan, rejected the appeal on the grounds that his sign was a form of “political advertising” and, as such, he would have needed to procure a permit to hold it up. Since a process exists to receive a permit to hold the sign, Holohan contended, Pavlou still had the right to express himself; thus, fining him for holding the sign did not “restrict human rights or freedom of expression.”

“Magistrate Holohan said Mr Pavlou was perfectly within his rights to hold up his signs, but not in the mall without a permit. The magistrate said that if Mr Pavlou had held up his signs on the other side of Adelaide Street, he would have broken no rules,” Australia’s ABC News reported.

Holohan also reportedly disparaged Pavlou as “insolent” and remorseless for his act of raising awareness of one of modern history’s most harrowing human rights atrocities. He condemned Pavlou turning the sign over to display its blank side – in response to mall security asking him not to display his message – as “a smart alec response to a reasonable request.”

Pavlou’s attorney, Anthony Morris, told reporters that he would appeal once again and accused the Australian government of using irrelevant advertising ordinances to protect the Chinese consulate from people who disagree with the regime.

“When there’s no difference between one side of Adelaide Street and the other, except that the Chinese consulate happens to be on the mall side of Adelaide Street, we think it’s a misapplication of the Queensland legislation,” Morris asserted.

Pavlou himself lamented the trial in a separate statement, describing it as a “free speech disaster” for his country in which the Brisbane courts decided “the Queensland Human Rights Act and its provisions protecting freedom of speech do not apply on the the [sic] street containing the Brisbane Chinese Consulate.”

“Last May I silently held a sign outside the Chinese Consulate reading: ”Nothing Happened on June 4, 1989, Change My Mind.’ I was charged with ‘unauthorised communication of advertising material’ for holding this sign,” he explained. “My sign obviously did not constitute advertising material because there was no commercial aspect to my sign – I wasn’t advertising a business, a shop, an energy drink.”

Pavlou has a short but prolific history of protesting the Chinese Communist Party in his country and abroad, beginning four years ago while studying at the University of Queensland.

An attempt to organize an event in solidarity with the 2019 Hong Kong anti-communist protests attracted violent communists to campus, who physically attacked Pavlou and supporters. University of Queensland students who publically supported the Hong Kong protests documented receiving death threats and having campus posters defaced. China’s state media outlets openly celebrated the violence.

“We want university campuses to be free, we want them to be liberal in their thoughts, we want young minds to be able to compete against each other,” then-Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said in October 2019, “but we don’t want interference in that space, we don’t want theft of IP in our country.”

Half a year later – in May 2020 – Pavlou faced expulsion from the university over his anti-China protests. Pavlou ultimately received a suspension and has returned to campus.

In 2021, Human Rights Watch documented transnational repression on college campuses growing, apparently at the hands of the Communist Party. In Australia, Human Rights Watch interviewed college students facing extreme intimidation and refusing to report it to university authorities as they “believed that their university would not take the threat seriously, believ[ed] their university was sympathetic to nationalistic Chinese students or gave priority to maintaining their relationship with the Chinese government.”

 

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