The All England Club, which runs the prestigious Wimbledon tennis tournament, claimed that an anti-communist protester removed from the men’s singles final on Sunday was “running down the stairs and causing a nuisance” at the event, contradicting the protester’s account that security officers shoved him down the stairs.
The protester, Australian anti-communist activist Drew Pavlou, had unfurled a homemade banner reading “Where is Peng Shuai?” and shouted messages demanding the Chinese Communist Party confirm her safety and the global tennis industry pressure China to do so.
Peng is a former Wimbledon champion who disappeared in China after publishing a social media post in November accusing one of the most powerful men in the country, top Olympics official Zhang Gaoli, of raping her. Peng has only been seen since in staged images published in Chinese government media outlets and offered an interview, under the chaperoning of Chinese government agents, to the sports magazine L’Equipe in February claiming that she “never disappeared” and never accused anyone of rape. Peng has not resurfaced since, and her allegations remain unresolved.
FILE – China’s Peng Shuai serves to Japan’s Nao Hibino during their first round singles match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, on Jan. 21, 2020. (Andy Brownbill, File/AP)
Wimbledon is notoriously the strictest tennis tournament regarding the behavior of the audience and players, mandating an all-white dress code for players on the court and keeping the crowd’s noise volume to a minimum. Prior to Pavlou’s display, Wimbledon security had stopped another group of Peng Shuai protesters from displaying their banners despite the fact that Wimbledon is the tournament at which Peng enjoyed the most success in her career. The move triggered outrage on the part of some in the tennis community.
On Sunday, Pavlou began shouting in the middle of the men’s final between players Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios – both of whom have publicly expressed support for Peng following her disappearance.
“I didn’t want to disrupt the actual match itself, so I waited to make sure there was a break in the play and then I just basically held up a sign saying ‘Where is Peng Shuai?’” Pavlou said in an interview with the Associated Press after his expulsion. “And I just said, ‘Where is Peng Shuai? This Chinese tennis star is being persecuted by the Chinese government. Why won’t Wimbledon say something?’”
In the immediate aftermath of his protest, Pavlou accused Wimbledon security officials of having “smashed [his] head into the wall” and claimed he had “just got thrown down the stairs.”
The All England Club issued a brief statement apparently claiming that Pavlou was “running” down the stairs when security ejected him. It did not plainly state if this was in addition to being shoved down the stairs or if this was the same incident that Pavlou had referenced.
“A spectator was removed from Centre Court after disrupting play by shouting, running down the stairs and causing a nuisance to their fellow spectators. The individual was removed by security colleagues and escorted off the grounds,” the statement read.
Pavlou did not deny shouting.
“I tried to be as loud as possible. I screamed it because I wanted people to hear it,” he told the AP.
In America, ESPN aired the end of Pavlou’s time in the stadium after Djokovic and Kyrgios stopped playing to look up into the stands in response to the noise. The live broadcast appeared to show a man dressed in a security uniform shoving a man in a light blue shirt – matching Pavlou’s outfit – down a flight of stadium stairs.
Pavlou later accused Wimbledon officials of treating him more roughly than they did someone who actually disturbed the players, an unidentified woman about whom Kyrgios could be heard on television arguing with the umpire.
Kyrgios accused the woman of having had “700 drinks” and demanded she be removed as she, he said, kept attempting to talk to him in the middle of points.
“Wimbledon security did nothing as a drunk woman repeatedly heckled and screamed at Nick Kyrgios during points. But threw me down a flight of stairs and smashed my face into a wall for saying ‘Where Is Peng Shuai,'” Pavlou wrote on Twitter. “The difference is they don’t want to lose Chinese sponsors.”
Pavlou later did apologize for disturbing the pitch.
Reporters asked Kyrgios about both incidents after the match, questioning if either of them hurt his concentration and potentially cost him the match. The player, whose Wimbledon appearance was his first in a tennis Grand Slam final, appeared to confirm that the unidentified woman was a major disturbance, but Pavlou had no impact on his performance.
“I didn’t get distracted at all from it,” Kyrgios said, adding that it seemed the reporter was trying to “bait” him into a political controversy.
“Good try,” he joked.
Djokovic, who won his seventh Wimbledon title on Sunday, has not publicly spoken about the incident, but was more vocal in condemning the Chinese government regarding Peng Shuai’s disappearance when it initially made news. Djokovic expressed full support for the “very bold and very courageous” decision the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) made in cutting ties with China in protest of its treatment of Peng.
“I support fully the WTA’s stance because we don’t have enough information about Peng Shuai and her well-being,” Djokovic said in December.
Asked in January, Kyrgios initially appeared surprised that Peng was still missing and hesitated to offer a specific comment, but nonetheless asserted, “we need more awareness about it, we can’t forget about it, we have to use our platforms as athletes.”
Pavlou has had an extensive history of protesting the Chinese Communist Party in Australia since his days at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, where he joined with students supporting the 2019 Hong Kong protests to condemn violent assaults by Chinese pro-regime students on campus. At the time, Pavlou said he had received anonymous messages threatening to “kill his family” for supporting democracy in Hong Kong.
More recently, Pavlou ran a senate campaign in May and launched an alliance of candidates standing against Chinese communist influence, many of them from populations repressed by Chinese communist policies, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hongkongers. Pavlou’s campaign largely consisted of protests against the Chinese government. In early May, police arrested Pavlou in Sydney for standing in public with a sign reading “Fuck Xi Jinping,” which Pavlou denounced as a violation of his free speech.
Some weeks later, police arrested and fined Pavlou again for standing in public holding a blank sign outside of the Chinese consulate in Brisbane.
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