The Iron Curtain referred to the boundary separating the Soviet Union and some European countries from the Western world. It became not just of a physical border but a symbol of the ideological distinction between communism and liberal democracy.
As is well known, the Soviet regime was authoritarian and repressed individual freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion. In fact, all aspects of life were controlled by the Communist party.
The Soviet regime was the very definition of authoritarian
We can draw comparisons between current restrictions on free speech in the West and the suppression of free speech in the Soviet Union.
Often the first sign of a society moving down a totalitarian path is the imposition of restrictions of freedom of speech.
The Soviet government heavily restricted media including print, radio and television. All were state controlled and heavily censored to ensure they were not critical of government. Currently the West is imposing restrictions on certain kinds of speech, such as speech considered discriminatory or harmful to certain groups. There are also rules against “disinformation” and “misinformation” and attempts to limit speech that is deemed to be false or misleading.
Media Censorship
Western governments have been accused of controlling and pressuring media to report on public interest matters to suit a particular narrative. We have witnessed this during the Ukraine conflict. The European Commission silenced Russian state media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik and prohibited European Union operators from broadcasting any of the content of RT and Sputnik. This move is reminiscent of the Soviet governments radio jamming during the Cold War, where transmissions of Western radio stations were blocked to “protect” Soviet citizens from Western “propaganda”.
This move to block Russian state media coverage of the Ukraine conflict was criticised by the European Federation of Journalists as “disproportionate and arbitrary interference by the EU with the right to freedom of expression and information regardless of frontiers as protected by Article 10 ECHR and as a denial of the freedom of the media as guaranteed by Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights”. (Dirk Voorhoof, Human Rights Centre Ghent University).
Surveillance
Another control tactic used by the oppressive Soviet regime was surveillance. The KGB monitored all forms of communication and utilised informants who reported dissenters.
Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google not only censor content that is considered inappropriate or offensive, but also gather data on their users which can be used to monitor and influence their behaviour. Such forms of surveillance can be used to suppress and silence dissenting views. The tech giants have been accused of suppressing the free speech of those with whom they disagree, particularly conservative or right-wing commentators.
Punishment
The Soviet government punished those who criticised or opposed the state with punishments including torture, forced confessions and the deprivation of liberty in gulags.
We have seen people in Western countries punished for speaking out against the government including journalists such as Julian Assange and whistle blowers. Punishments include imprisonment, de platforming and cancel culture. Social media companies also punish users who violate their policies by suspending or banning accounts, another method to silence voices who do not support the government narrative.
Julian Assange. His ongoing detention without trial is illiberal.
Libertarians recognise the importance of freedom of speech as a bedrock principle of democracy and do not seek to limit the speech of others. In a free and democratic society, the media is supposed to operate independently of government control, to inform the public about matters that are in the public interest, and to hold governments accountable.
One must ask why our governments censor information and limit access to information. Regarding the Ukraine conflict, the government and media are displaying their contempt toward citizens in not allowing them, as free-thinking human beings, to decide for themselves which information they will consume and what conclusions that they will draw from that information. There is only one narrative that they will allow – the one that they control. Is the West drawing a digital iron curtain?
Soviet journalist, dissident and former political prisoner Alexander Podrabinek wrote that “Free speech is what digs the grave for despotism, while suppression of free speech is the trademark of dictatorship”. (Totalitarianism and Freedom of Speech, 24 June 2014, Institute of Modern Russia). Podrabinek went on to argue that the collapse of totalitarianism always began with the assertion of freedom of speech.
The Soviet regime’s suppression of free speech had a terrible effect on its citizens and is viewed as one of the most oppressive regimes in modern history. But brave freedom fighters spoke out against the regime, circumvented restrictions on radio broadcasting and other methods of control, and eventually the Soviet Union collapsed.
Freedom begins with free speech and the free exchange of ideas. It is vital to our democracy. We must remain vigilant against the creep of totalitarianism to protect our personal freedoms. We must continue to use our voices individually and collectively to push back against any attempt to curtail our right to free speech.
This is especially true if the political speech in question is radical, is expressed by the craziest, most dangerous people.
Never ban a communist, a fascist, an ethno-nationalist or a militant jihadist.
Why?
I’ll give you eight reasons …
Banning political speech white-ants liberal democracy. How is this the case when liberal democracy is the very thing we cherish and want to protect? Well, if governments of free-people ban a group from expressing themselves, we’ve just taken one incremental step away from freedom. Ban one, you can ban two. Each step logically moves democracy towards a regime less tolerant. If a country has, say, eleven political movements, the government of the day needs only take ten steps to ban all opposing views!
Banning political speech is a double-edged sword. Sure, it’s tempting when in power. How long will you be in power though? Today’s government is tomorrow’s opposition. Ban a view today and you’ll be muzzled tomorrow. It’s a dangerous tactic with unintended consequences for you personally.
Banning political speech creates a habit our politicians shouldn’t develop. Prohibiting one thing can lead to outlawing many other freedoms. If political speech can be banned without a whimper, why not who we associate with or where we travel, how we earn a living or who we worship.
Banning political speech creates martyrs for your opponent’s movement. The zealots and disgruntled fanatics who follow them have long, long memories, will use the banning as evidence for their cause and will add it as yet another grievance to motivate and inspire an ever-growing support base.
Banning political speech hides the enemy. If the views you’ve prohibited from being expressed are radical and could lead to, if implemented, the end of liberal democracy itself, it’s far, far better to know the identities of these foes. Shut them down and you might never know who and where they are.
Banning political speech weakens the future leaders of liberal democracy. The next generation of political leaders will have lived without hearing the message we’ve banned. They will be unpractised countering taboo opinions. They’ll be less battle-hardened politically and ill-prepared for the fights ahead.
Banning political speech is the Leftists’ cancel culture you despise. Today, they have little choice. Winning an argument is beyond many in the Left. Let them play the game of deplatforming and cancelling. Let them weaken themselves. Liberals, classical liberals and libertarians? Never.
Banning political speech puts you in very bad company. Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein were chillingly effective at using this blunt, illiberal tool to crush dissent. Do you really want to associate yourself with these despots?
Australia is home to nearly 3,000 Tibetans. This number has increased steadily by around 100 new Tibetans a year. Almostall are on humanitarian visas.
3,000 is not a huge number, but it fills up the whole town of, say, McLaren Vale, a well-known wine-producing region in South Australia. Whilst it may sound quite cozy, the reality of life for these Tibetans, of course, is nothing like sipping delicious wine.
These Tibetans are political prisoners who have fled Tibet and come to Australia for safety, due to the brutal persecution by Beijing since its Tibet annexation in 1951. Although it may seem like a long time ago, the human rights abuses in Tibet have not stopped since the Chinese invasion.
Religious persecution has been a consistent theme in China. Liberty Itch has reported the Chinese Communist Party’s unspeakable abuses of the Uyghurs, Christians, and Falun Gong.
The Chinese regime is determined that all their citizens worship nothing but the Chinese Communist Party – except that Tibetans are not even ‘Chinese citizens.’ Like East Turkistan, Tibet was an independent neighbouring country on the Western side of China.
Neighbours of the People’s Republic of China.
It’s unfortunate to be China’s neighbours, as their autonomy and freedom are constantly at risk.
Alarmingly, the CCP’s invasion of economically weaker countries is not just a matter of history. We know that Taiwan is the next immediate invasion target while the Indo-Pacific region has received increasing ‘interest’ and economic coercion by the Chinese State.Subscribe
It is not right that only the Chinese propaganda machine has the power to narrate history. Liberty Itch is eager to reach out to individuals, who possess first-hand stories of what has occurred in their nation’s history.
We made contact with Perth based Tibetan Australian, Tenpa Dargye, who spent five years in a Chinese prison from 2001 to 2006. He is a direct victim of the atrocities committed by the Chinese government. Although he is well settled in Australia, his life continues to be impacted today.
Tanpa visited Adelaide last week and the interview was conducted face to face.
Liberty Itch: Please tell us about your experience in Tibet.
Tenpa Dargye: I was born and grew up in the Golog of Eastern Tibet. Today, Tibet is the least free country in the world, among the same ranks of Syria and South Sudan. I believe in Buddhism and my spiritual leader is the Dalai Lama. I meditate regularly and believe in peace and kindness.
Golog, Eastern Tibet.
Prior to People’s Republic of China’s invasion in 1950, Tibet was an independent country with its own government, military, national flag, language and currency. The majority of Tibetans practice Buddhism and respect the nature that inherits the Ancient Bon Religion, the indigenous religious tradition of Tibet.
Since 1987, the PRC government suddenly tightened its control over the three regions of Tibet again. I was imprisoned by the Colonial Government of the PRC for practicing the political vision of the 14th Dalai Lama. I was in prison for five years from 2001 to 2006. I was released in 2006 but I got arrested again, during the 2008 Tibetan uprising, for another two months.
LI: Five years is a long time. What was it like in a Chinese prison during this period?
TD: I was in a Colonial Government prison in Lhasa, which is the capital city of Tibet. The interrogations in prison were unbearable. Without given any reason, I was given electric shocks to my heart and mouth. The PRC prison guards seemed to enjoy causing anguish, as they were laughing after giving me each shock. During interrogations, they demanded I recant my faith in the Dalai Lama and declare loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. I felt powerless and terrified.
Potala Palace, Lhasa City, Tibet.
I was finally released in 2006 on admitted that the Chinese Communist Party rule was the best rule for all Tibetans. I was coerced into admitting it so I could get out of prison.
Then in 2008, I was arrested again for two months. Arbitrary arrest and detention are ‘normal’ in Tibet. I was arrested for ‘having incorrect sentiment’ towards to Chinese Communist Party.
This time when they released me, I fled to India. India is a common place to which Tibetans escape, because of its proximity to Tibet.
LI: How did you end up in Australia? How is your life impacted today?
TD: When I was in India in 2009, I was helped by people who created the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. They were very kind and helped me apply for an Australian humanitarian visa.
In 2014, I started the campaign, “I’m not celebrating the Tibetan New year before the reunion of inside and outside Tibetan people”. As part of the campaign, each year, I visit a different Australian capital city during Tibetan New Year, usually in February. I want people to understand and remember the 160 Tibetan self-immolators, including among them 41 Buddhist monks and 8 nuns, who have set fire to themselves in protest at the Chinese occupation.
‘Self-immolation’ is an action in Tibetan Buddhism, where one sets fire to oneself as a form of protest and sacrifice. I want people to honour and remember them, like we honour our war heroes on Anzac Day. All of them have sacrificed themselves for our freedom.
My campaign started in Dharamshala in North India in 2014. Then I went to Brisbane in 2015, Sydney in 2016, Canberra in 2017, Melbourne in 2018, Perth in 2019, Hobart in 2020, Perth again in 2021 and 2022 due to COVID restrictions, and in 2023 I visited Adelaide for the first time.
Tenpa Dargye at Parliament House, Adelaide. 21 February 2023.
I want my fellow compatriots to understand that although Tibet seems ‘invisible’ today due to Chinese occupation, I still refuse to accept my nation’s invasion by Beijing.
Tibet still lives in my heart and I dream of a day when it will be free again, with spirituality replacing the CCP’s vandalism.
First, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation effective, at the latest, early in February 2023. (Yes, New Zealanders need to endure her for a few weeks more!)
Second, I put out this short tweet yesterday together with a video of the Prime Minister, and it went viral. In a mere 180 minutes, it was seen by 67,400 people and was still swishing around the globe as I wrote this. After 8 hours, 165,000+!
Jacinda Ardern set a couple of records. She was the youngest female prime minister ever in 2017. Further, she gave birth whilst in office.
Of course, neither of these have anything to do with political achievement.
To be fair, we can probably agree that Jacinda Ardern is expressive.
Some went so far as to say she showed great empathy.
I think it more accurate to say any apparent empathy was self-consciously dispensed and exclusively to beneficiaries of her bias.
Any praise for expressiveness and empathy needs much closer scrutiny. It’s what she expresses that so confounds civil libertarians like you and me. And, if you don’t mind me expressing myself here dear reader, she showed a distinct lack of empathy for many during covid lockdowns, victims of which are generations not yet born as you’ll see. So read on.
Instead, what we observed was a smiling socialist, a Daughter of Davos, instinct over intellect, all feeling and no financial finesse. In short, she was a classical liberal’s nightmare.
Just look at the legacy she leaves after six reckless years in office:
Frequent meddling with the free market. The results: distortions in housing prices and a generation of first home buyers shut-out of their ownership aspirations;
A backlash against over-zealous covid restrictions and loss of personal freedoms, including creating a medical-apartheid defined by vaccination-status. See the video tweet above;
Conscientious objectors and the vaccine-hesitant were shunned socially, denied mobility, prevented from earning a living and targeted by government in ways the Stasi would have relished in Soviet-era East Germany;
Consequential increasing crime rates in the island nation;
Inflation sitting at 7.2%;
Food prices spiking 8.3% compared with the same time a year earlier;
Successive interest rate increases from New Zealand’s central bank;
A monstrous public debt! When she took office, the public debt was approximately $60 billion USD. Projections are that, based on all data currently available reflecting the decisions of her government, that the national debt will balloon to $151 billion USD by 2027. If the figure proves higher or lower than that, it will be the result of her successor’s policies, but you can see the economic vandalism on her watch. Put it this way, she led a government which racked-up triple the debt of all previous New Zealand governments combined. She went way over the credit card limit and left someone else to pick up the bill. Funny, right?;
For a country with a population the size of Boston, it will take three generations at least to bring that debt to heel. We are talking inter-generational theft which will crush Zoomer Kiwis’ standard of living, their children and their grandchildren. That is to say, on the day after you, I and Jacinda Ardern meet our Lord and Maker, New Zealanders will be dealing with the Ardern Economic Catastrophe for another two generations thereafter;
Many of them will flee New Zealand and hollow this beautiful jewel of the South Pacific. They have been emigrating anyway, mainly to Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States;
A strategic flirtation with the Chinese Communist Party. Her Labour Party has long shunned our liberal democratic ally, America. It was a natural progression from that to openly calling for greater integration with the communists, a weak-kneed strategy in favour of firebrand authoritarianism with a chequebook over the cleansing-balm of liberty;
Consistent with that predisposition towards authoritarianism, civil liberties in New Zealand were shattered under her Governments. Emergency powers poised to be invoked again at any time are left in place;
Chinese Communist Party infiltration of New Zealand consulates and banks;
She openly lied about the efficacy of covid vaccines. “If you take the vaccine, you’ll still get covid but you won’t get sick and you won’t die” was a claim she made during the height of an hysteria of her own making, and contradicted by the science and the manufacturer. Don’t believe me? Watch this …
More government restrictions on the access and use of water;
Crushing regulations on agricultural emissions;
Further shifting of the goal posts with hate speech laws without any safeguards as to who adjudicates what ‘hate speech’ actually is.
The adulation and applause had faded about a year ago. The shadowy World Economic Forum’s simping seemed impossibly distant now. Jacinda Ardern had to face the people of New Zealand imminently and the prospects weren’t promising.
With polling numbers in decline and the sparkle now tarnished, the Prime Minister did what all faithful authoritarians and central-planners do when their number is up. She spoke sweetly, smiled nervously, then scurried to the nearest exit hoping that the rule of law she undermined holds firm for her.
I was shocked my tweet went viral. I shouldn’t have been. Countless everyday people across the West, people like you and I, have had a gutful.
The Daughter of Davos was a symbol of all that has gone wrong over the last 3 years. So of course you cheered her departure.
I don’t think we’ll have to wait long before she re-emerges with an ostentatious job title and global brief somewhere in the world. “Poverty Ambassador-At-Large, World Economic Forum”, on $820,000 per annum, Davos chalet and chauffeur the obligatory perks on top sounds about right.
And when that happens, you and I can both smile knowingly that at least here she won’t have harmed anyone further. On her departure from the Land of the Long White Cloud, she will increase the average IQ of New Zealand, and not decrease that of the World Economic Forum.
Omar Bekali visited Adelaide recently to deliver a series of keynote speeches.
At first glance, a man on a speaking tour seems ordinary enough. However, Omar’s story is anything but ordinary.
A survivor of the Chinese Communist Party’s Xinjiang Camp, Omar Bekali, 46, presents as a courageous but scarred man with first-hand experience of the Chinese Government’s network of concentration camps. He not only saw people being subjected to unspeakable brutality and torture. He was one of them!
The following interview is compelling and especially wincing, coming with a reader warning. Yet his message is of global importance. The dark truth of China’s concentration camps and human rights violations is uncovered in all their gore.
The scene is Chinese occupied East Turkistan, Xinjiang.
The interview begins …
Liberty Itch: How did you end up in a concentration camp in XinJiang?
OB: My family and I lived in Kazakhstan. I went to Urumqi for a Trade Expo on 22 March 2017 for my work. Then on 25 March 2017, I went to Turpan, a City in Xinjiang, to visit my parents, where I was arrested and detained.
That morning, I was at my parents’ house with my brothers and sisters. Suddenly two police cars pulled up outside our house. Five armed police officers got out from their cars, came into our home, and arrested me. They never presented me with a warrant; they told me that they had one on their computer. I was brought to Dighar Village Police Station where I was made to wait for two hours. Every chance I got, I’d ask to call my parents, a lawyer, the Kazakh Embassy, or my wife, because no one knew where I was and I couldn’t call for help.
LI: On what grounds were you arrested by the Chinese Police?
OB: It is because I am a Turkic Kazakh. Beijing wants to erase all Turkic people in East Turkistan, a country invaded by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. The land is now commonly known as ‘XinJiang, China’. I was suddenly accused of ‘terrorism’ and ‘smuggling people out of China’. I was targeted and discriminated against for being a Turkic Kazakh.
LI: When and how long did you stay in the camp?
OB: I stayed in the camp from 26 March 2017 to 24 November 2017.
LI: Where was your family at that time?
OB: My family was in Kazakhstan. I have a beautiful family with my wife and 3 children.
LI: How was your family impacted?
OB: The CCP destroyed my beautiful family. My family members including my children are all mentally impacted. My youngest son, who was one year and three month old when I was captured, could not call me dad for nearly a year after I returned. He complains even now that I abandoned him.
The purpose of these concentration camps is to indoctrinate Uyghurs into obeying the Chinese government. They use sophisticated mechanisms to brainwash us. I was told by the guards I had been poisoned by extreme ideologies during my life outside of China and needed to have a proper ‘Chinese Education’.
LI: What activities did they require of you in the camp?
OB: We are forced to study the Chinese language, Marxism, ‘Xi Jinping Thoughts’, renounce our religion and younger inmates worked in factories.
We were denied food for not agreeing to sing anthems that praised the Chinese government, otherwise known as Red Songs. We were told to denounce our Uyghur identity and Muslim faith. I was made to read a list of 60 types of common crimes associated with my ethnic and religious identity, praying to Allah, having a beard, attending a Muslim marriage, and communicating with people outside China.
My personal belief is that they never actually planned on indoctrinating us. The plan was always to exterminate the Uyghur population and harvest our organs.
LI: Did you comply with all the tasks? What would happen if you didn’t do them?
OB: I tried to resist. I denied the Chinese government’s accusations and asked them to show me the evidence. But that led to severe torture as punishment. The police realised they needed to escalate the pressure to get me to say what they wanted me to say.
From the police station I was brought somewhere I didn’t recognise. The police made me take off my clothes and examined my body, making notes about my condition. That’s when the torture started. They transferred me to the police station, in Kelamayi, Xinjiang.
My hands were strapped onto the arms on the chair and my feet were constrained at the bottom while needles were gradually slid into my fingers. That would last four to eight hours every day.
From April 3 to April 7, 2017, they would put me in the ‘Tiger Chair’ to try and extract information from me and compel me to admit to crimes I wasn’t guilty of.
They said I organised terrorist activities, propagated terrorism, or covered-up for terrorists. The police showed me photos of Uyghur and Kazakh people in Kazakhstan and asked me for their information.
I was given a letter accounting for all of my ‘crimes’ and told to sign it as a confession.
My job was used against me. The police claimed I was using my tourism career as a way to smuggle people out of China and into neighbouring countries.
Needles and nails were inserted into my body every time I told them “no” or “I’m innocent”.
An iron wire was shoved into my penis.
Rope was tied to the ceiling and around my wrists so tight that my feet couldn’t touch the ground. The rope ripped through the skin on my wrists while my body weight pulled me down.
Other days I was put in a “flying plane” position, where both my wrists and feet were tied to the ceiling, pulling my arms and legs out of their sockets while I was left dangling.
The guards would laugh as my body pulled itself apart.
There were five other types of punishment for those who didn’t follow the guards’ orders.
First, they’d make me face a wall for 24 hours without food or drink while they beat me with rubber rods.
Second, we were put in the Tiger Chair where needles were shoved into our fingers and feet.
Third, we’d be left in solitary confinement with no light for 24 hours.
Fourth, they’d put us into scorching hot rooms in the summer or freezing cold rooms in the winter.
Finally, a punishment I thankfully never experienced was called water prison. I heard of many detainees who were put in the water prison, but I don’t know what it is.
OB: To my great surprise on November 24, 2017, I was informed of my release and expulsion to Kazakhstan. I had been detained for eight months. I later learned that my wife sent a number of letters to the UN Human Rights Commission and the Kazakhstan Foreign Minister attesting to my innocence.
The considerable press coverage of my illegal detainment was a major factor in my release.
LI: Where do you live now?
OB: I migrated to the Netherlands with a valid visa. I moved there to provide eyewitness evidence about what is happening in the concentration camps in XinJiang.
LI: How many Uyghur people are in concentration camps in XiaJiang?
OB: It’s always hard to tell, of course. However, while I was in the camp in 2017, my best estimate is that more than a million Uyghurs were in the camps.
Omar’s is a cautionary tale about brutality inflicted by our largest trading partner. He endured trauma and unspeakable pain that no-one should be required to bear.
However, I prefer to see Omar through the lens of unfaltering courage, resilience and the strength to survive. There’s a bravery in telling his painful story again and again on a global stage, a story shared by millions of Uyghurs and other minority groups who are still in the XinJiang camps.
Today, he is bringing his testimony before international human rights bodies.
What can everyday Australians do to help the Uyghur people?
This year the United States used it’s Magnitsky legislation to ban the import of certain Xinjiang products, including cotton, over concerns about forced-labor in the XinJiang region.
Australia has similar Magnitsky legislation but has not used it to sanction companies exploiting Uyghur slave-labour.
Whilst we at Liberty Itch wholeheartedly support free-trade and are against wholesale nationwide sanctions, products manufactured with slave-labour is anathema to free-trade principles and cannot be supported.
While you wait for your Commonwealth Government to take a stand on this, you can take action as an individual and purchase alternatives to brands made with Uyghur slave-labour.
Small acts of defiance in support of human rights go a long way.
Brave Chinese citizens have yet again risked imprisonment challenging their country’s regime.
They took to the streets to fight the Chinese Communist Party’s prolonged and inhumane lockdown, a policy which caused residents trapped in their high-rise apartment building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, to be burned-alive.
In scenes from the security state rarely accessible to the world, Chinese people gathered in the Shanghai streets and chanted ‘CCP, step down. Xijiping, step down!’ The chanting showed the citizens’ barely concealed contempt and dissatisfaction with their government, seemingly well beyond just its strict COVID measures.
The whereabouts of the protest leader you see in this video is unknown.
His family were eye-witnesses to him being handcuffed and unceremoniously bundled into a van. There is no official paperwork of his arrest. His family reported that three days after the arrest, there is still no trace of the young man.
He was simply ‘made to disappear.’
China is the world’s most heavily surveilled country. Intrusive facial recognition software, a tool used to thwart human rights and civil liberties, is now being routinely exploited by the Chinese Police State. Facial recognition systems log nearly every single citizen in the country, with 372.8 cameras per 1,000 people.
Chinese authorities have reportedly begun tracking-down people who took part in the demonstrations. Students are always the weakest and easiest to pick off. Others who attended the protests are being rounded-up without scrutiny from international media.
This wasn’t sufficient intimidation for the despotic regime. The Chinese Government immediately made its military presence felt more publicly as it rolled-out armoured tanks on the street.
Unlike the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the Government now has the technology to corral freedom-activists more secretly to avoid the world’s condemnation. The Chinese Communist Party, with all the apparatus of a surveillance state and growing superpower, seemingly acts in fear of its own defenceless citizens.
These actions are a continuation of well-documented brutality evident in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. (Warning: the next video depicts graphic violence on an unarmed civilian. Viewer discretion recommended.)
If you listen to rare public forays by senior members of the security establishment, the spies and their agencies, we in the West are under threat from several fronts. Looming front and centre, they say, is an expansionary Chinese Communist Party.
To be clear, Liberty Itch has no quarrel with the Chinese people.
However, Liberty Itch is sceptical of government of all stripes, whether in the West or the Chinese Communist Party. Government has a nasty habit of suppressing its people, sometimes stripping freedoms one imperceptible step at a time, its citizens in a saucepan of the slow boil kind. Sometimes government makes swift and savage moves against its people. History is replete with examples of both.
So well may we ask: Is the Chinese Communist Party friend or foe, our ally or adversary? We in the West welcome and educate their students. We trade with their corporations. Australia, the United States and indeed the entire OECD are beneficiaries of China’s emergence. Our shared prosperity is enormous as China brings a billion citizens out of agrarian life into a century-delayed Industrial Revolution and today’s Information Age simultaneously. The project is breathtaking.
But as Liberty Itch discovered, geopolitical relationships are complex. Material wealth is soulless if not accompanied by human rights. We cannot be so naïve or selectively blind as to ignore civil liberties in our estimation. The Dragon we feed and enable today should be ready to take its place on the world stage as a force for good.
With an open mind, Liberty Itch therefore embarked on an investigation, a series of tell-all interviews with people with particular direct experience with the Chinese Communist Party. The stories are real. The events described happened and cannot be ignored. What each does is illuminate, directly and personally, how the Chinese Communist Party acts from a civil liberties perspective.
Our first guest in this series is Fiona Hui.
You can see the former flight attendant in Fiona instantly. Urbane, impeccably-dressed and possessed of a welcoming smile, she possesses a charm hard not to like. She has navigated many of life’s milestones and responsibilities already while retaining her youthful energy.
First impressions rarely tell the whole story. As you peel-away the onion layers of her life, normality gives way to heartache, the collapse of her homeland, the incarceration of a loved one and a fight for survival with lessons for all freedom-lovers who value their civil liberties.
So her story is yours. There are some timely warnings for all of us.
Here’s Liberty Itch’s short interview with Fiona Hui.
LI: When did you become an Australian citizen?
FH: Although I have been living in Australia for nearly 20 years, I only became an Australian citizen very recently, in 2021. I applied for my citizenship in light of the loss of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong in 2019. At that point, I realised that Australia is my only home, so I submitted my citizenship application.
LI: Prior to this, you were a citizen of which country?
FH: Prior to 2021, I was a citizen of Hong Kong. I was born and raised under the British rule in Hong Kong.
LI: You lived in Hong Kong during which years?
FH: I lived in Hong Kong since I was born in 1980, until 2004, when I left Hong Kong and came to Australia to pursue a liberal arts education.
LI: What was life like in Hong Kong in those early years?
FH: As a successful former British Colony from 1841–1997, Hong Kong is a unique place blending East and West. I always felt free, safe, and connected to the West when I was a child and a young teenager. I enjoyed living in a ‘very Chinese city’ essentially, but also appreciated the opportunities to be exposed to Western literature, music, philosophies and ideologies. It was dynamic, stimulating and exciting.
LI: Why did you leave Hong Kong?
FH: I left Hong Kong for a Western higher education. I did not imagine Hong Kong could become what it is today when I left. Like most people. I have taken democracy for granted and couldn’t imagine otherwise.
LI: From the handover by Britain in 1997 to your departure, what changes did you notice in Hong Kong?
FH: Since the handover in 1997, there has been a steady and gradual erosion of Hong Kong freedoms. Since the structure of democracy was already in place, Hong Kong people had been asking for ‘universal suffrage’, all adult citizens should be able to vote for their government representatives, as highlighted by the Occupy Central and Umbrella Movement in 2014.
In 2019, 70-80% of the Hong Kong population participated in the largest and longest Hong Kong protests in history, in demonstration of the City’s strong will to safeguard Hong Kong’s declining civil liberties and freedoms.
Then in 2020, the National Security Law was introduced by the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Under this law, any pro-democracy movement was suddenly classified as ‘secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion’.
2020 was the year when Hong Kong lost its press freedom, the rights to peaceful protests, and the complete collapse of the rule of law.
LI: I believe this is the time we saw footage of Chinese Communist Party agents breaking into the The Epoch Times and smashing the printing presses with sledge-hammers …
FH: Yes. They actually set fire to the bureau. The building was aflame.
LI: How did these changes impact your family initially?
FH: My family was fine for many years after the handover. The whole world thought China was opening-up and we could work together for a more prosperous world.
LI: Your brother was a Hong Kong democratically-elected parliamentarian. How did his status slowly change?
FH: It was not until 2019 with the breakout of large-scale protests in Hong Kong that it started to seriously impact my family. My brother, Ted Hui, being a vocal pro-democracy legislator, was frequently arrested due to his involvement in mediating the protests, wanting to protect young people and ordinary citizens from being abused and arrested. Like the majority of the population, Ted was pepper sprayed, tear-gassed, abused and arrested many times. In the end, his parliamentarian status was completely disregarded by the Hong Kong Police and the Chinese Communist Party. They just treated him like a ‘criminal’. Democracy had suddenly become a serious crime.
LI: How did your brother and other democratically-elected parliamentarians reconcile the freedoms bequeathed by British rule and a growing autocratic influence from the Chinese Communist Party?
FH: They have never reconciled the loss of freedoms. Some of his MP friends are still in prison. Many like Ted, went in ‘exile’ and continued with the movement overseas, lobbying governments of the Five Eyes, warning them of the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party regime. I guess they are now all ‘colluding with foreign forces’, as the Chinese Communist Party would describe it.
LI: How did things come to a flashpoint?
FH: The prolonged protests in 2019, combined with the noble and pure intention of democracy-loving Hongkongers, and the Chinese Communist Party led by a psychopathic Chinese President Xi Jinping have all contributed to this flashpoint.
LI: What role did you play in responding to the loss of civil liberties?
FH: I was not interested in politics at all prior to 2019, I had a great life in Adelaide. Who cared? However, the 2019 Hong Kong Crisis made me awake. The images and live-streaming of abuse in Hong Kong stunned me. I was in disbelief that freedom could be lost like this overnight. I couldn’t believe that people could be thrown in prison for protesting and speaking. It was all just unimaginable.
So I became a ‘democracy activist’.
Then I discovered CCP activism in my adopted country of Australia. So I exposed the CCP’s interference in Australia and politicians who were working with the CCP for their own self-serving interests.
I joined the Liberal Democrats for a period because I saw that they had good policy in support of libertarianism and humanitarianism principles. I also connected with organisations and communities who cared about our civil liberties.
FH: My brother got ‘invited’ by some young, democracy-loving Danish politicians and libertarians to attend a ‘Climate Conference’. It was staged so that Ted had an excuse to get out of Hong Kong. At that time, his passport was detained by the Hong Kong Court, but the judge decided to release his passport so that Ted could attend this ‘conference’. The judge made a fine decision but, to this day, I don’t know whether he was subsequently imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party!
Ted escaped also because many people around that world have played a part in helping him and praying for him. This includes the Australian Government and many nameless men and women within and outside our government. We have some good people in this country, who have empathy, intelligence, capability and goodwill. God bless Australia.
LI: What did you leave behind?
FH: My family and I won’t be able to go back to Hong Kong for a long time. Under the current circumstances, I’ve convinced myself there is not much worth going back for anyway. I miss the mountains. I miss the views. Any love I had of shopping there is tainted by the lack of a free press, no free speech, no rule of law. Home is where the family is. Australia is my only home. Look forward rather than backwards!
LI: Why choose Australia to live?
FH: I chose Australia due to its beauty, its reputation in higher education and its proximity to Asia.
LI: What worrying early-signs in sliding from democracy to tyranny do you see in Australia?
FH: The early-signs were shown during the last two years: how our governments managed COVID, especially in Melbourne, the prolonged lockdowns, and the mandatory vaccinations in various industries.
Modern technological advancement means that people are more easily monitored. I’m worry about the introduction of My Gov Accounts, facial recognition cameras in our City here in Adelaide, digital IDs and yet more business-crushing IDs for company directors.
We have to be careful how people in positions of power use these mechanisms. They could be used to make us a more effective country, or they could be used as a means of monitoring and control. It all depends on how you view the government and the people holding those powerful positions.
We need to be awake and alert.
LI: How quickly can that slide happen, in your experience?
FH: The loss of freedom could happen so quickly that people will be in disbelief. Just look at Hong Kong. A clean, proper judicial system could end so fast. Unimaginable.
LI: What can your fellow Australians do to counteract this?
FH: Stay aware and united with fellow Australians. Unity and helping others in need. Play a part to end the divide and polarisation in society. Be the change you want to see in the world.
LI: What do you think the outlook is for Australia?
FH: Australia is a lucky country. I believe that we will continue to be blessed. Be careful of the ‘doom and gloom’ presented in the media. I feel hopeful and positive about our country.
In a quiet moment today or even right now if that’s possible, read the lyrics below whilst watching this clip … and tell me this doesn’t make you more determined politically.
“We’re not gonna sit in silence, We’re not gonna live with fear” could well apply to the last two and a half years. So, are you going to “Make a noise and make it clear”?
We have the chance to turn the pages over We can write what we want to write We gotta make ends meet, before we get much older We’re all someone’s daughter We’re all someone’s son How long can we look at each other Down the barrel of a gun?
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make a noise and make it clear Oh, whoa We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa
This time, we know we all can stand together With the power to be powerful Believing we can make it better Ooh, we’re all someone’s daughter We’re all someone’s son How long can we look at each other Down the barrel of a gun?
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make a noise and make it clear Oh, whoa We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa
Ooh, we’re all someone’s daughter We’re all someone’s son How long can we look at each other Down the barrel of a gun?
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make the noise and make it clear Oh, whoa We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make a noise and make it clear Oh, whoa We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make a noise and make it clear Oh, whoa We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make a noise and make it clear Oh, whoa We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear Oh, whoa
Two hours ago, Elon Musk’s long-anticipated acquisition of Twitter was completed.
Hopes now run high that at least one social media platform can operate for all and free speech restored.
Time will tell.
As an avid user of the platform, I believe the following needs addressing:
1. Bots. The system is fouled by fake accounts created by algorithm. The platform must be cleansed on this problem.
2. Bad-Faith Actors. I’m not talking about typical anonymous accounts, but rather accounts run by nation-state troll farms at call centre scale. I’m constantly inundated with this scourge. They used to be easy to spot: low follower numbers, homogeneity of digital assets in the profile feed, short sentences in broken English. They are now becoming harder and harder to spot. They sit like sleeper agents in good citizens’ follower list for what sinister purpose or misinformation we are yet to learn. Get rid of them.
3. Safety & Integrity. It almost goes without saying that the previous management, the CEO, CFO, Corporate Counsel and Policy Officer now unceremoniously terminated by Musk, actively pursued centre-right users with the Safety & Integrity Department. It used a pincer movement to suppress centre-right users. The first was the dreaded algorithm which flagged people and then spurted automatic double-speak messages to put people in a procedural cul-de-sac. Then it referred a select few of the targeted users to an inadequately small Safety & Integrity Department of actual humans who them mercilessly cancelled many honest users with unfavoured political views. Ending this double-pincer is huge priority to restore the platform.
4. Advertising. As a B2B businessman, I have no need to advertise on Twitter. It’s a B2C platform. Even if I were wishing to advertise to the retail or B2C markets, I wouldn’t use Twitter. How can targeting occur when most handles are anonymous. It’s a very low-value, hit and miss way to reach new customers.
5. Caves and Common. A ‘cave’ is a place in an online community where a person can retreat or pursue more focused relationships. A ‘common’ is where you’re in the flow of action, in the bright shiny lights of the site. Because Twitter is all common, is feels like a brutal fight club. There’s little respite, little joy, little reprieve. Twitter groups or rooms would be a fantastic innovation.
6. Anonymous Handles. Of course, most people tweet with the protection of anonymity. But for the advertising issue, I think that’s OK. However, the site would be far better if people declared their identity. It would temper the fight club feel of the platform and users would be more likely to self-moderate. As there are advantages to anonymity, like speaking truth to power and whistleblowing, I think a hybrid model would work well. So users could still have an anonymous handle, but with limited reach or features. Upgrading to full user identification would allow greater reach and features.
Whatever changes are made by Mr Musk, one thing is certain. The property is now in the hands of a man who knows how to make things happen.
It will be interesting to watch.
It will be even more interesting being a Twitter user.
