Angry over campus speech by Uighur activist, Chinese students in Canada contact their consulate, film presentation

"... they contacted the Chinese Embassy about the event and were told to see whether university officials attended and whether Chinese nationals had organized the talk. They later wrote that they sent photos to Chinese officials..."

"... Chinese students have grown into a vocal and coordinated force on Western campuses, monitoring and pushing back against speech they deem critical of China..."

"... Darkness Try 1 month for $1 Sign In Newsletters & Alerts Gift Subscriptions Contact Us Help Desk World Angry over campus speech by Uighur activist, Chinese students in Canada contact their consulate, film presentation

Pedestrians walk past the Erdao Bridge mosque in Urumqi, in China’s autonomous Xinjiang region, on Nov. 6. (Bloomberg News) By Gerry Shih and Emily Rauhala February 14 at 5:40 PM The news of a talk by a Uighur activist spread quickly on campus, ricocheting across WeChat, the Chinese messaging app.

A group of Chinese students at McMaster University, in Ontario, learned that Rukiye Turdush, a vocal critic of the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs, was set to deliver a presentation about the mass internment of Muslims in China’s far northwest.

The students were furious that a woman they considered a separatist would be given a platform to speak. So they rallied in a chat group and reached out to a familiar source of guidance: the Chinese government.

As Turdush gave her presentation that afternoon, a student in the audience filmed her, and later shouted at her before storming out.

Students wrote in a WeChat group that they contacted the Chinese Embassy about the event and were told to see whether university officials attended and whether Chinese nationals had organized the talk. They later wrote that they sent photos to Chinese officials.

In the following days, Chinese student groups published a “bulletin report” about Turdush’s talk. The bulletin, which was co-signed by five McMaster student groups, including the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), noted contact with the Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

The incident at McMaster was pieced together using records of a group chat conducted in Chinese and translated by The Washington Post, interviews with three people in the chat room, video footage of the event, and the bulletin.

It offers a vivid example of how Chinese students have grown into a vocal and coordinated force on Western campuses, monitoring and pushing back against speech they deem critical of China. It is of particular note because it is unusual to find written evidence of apparent coordination with officials.

Though student organizing and heated debate are common and important parts of campus life, contact with the Chinese Consulate may cross a line, experts said, and will no doubt renew questions about the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to influence foreign institutions, including universities.

“As with many things involving China, there is a continuum, running from what is acceptable to not acceptable,” said David Mulroney, who served as Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012.

Students rallying around a cause is absolutely acceptable, he said, but coordination with diplomats generally goes beyond normal involvement. “The fact they want to know which academics attend hints at desire to stop academic freedom,” he said.

Multiple calls to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto went unanswered. The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa did not respond to a written request for comment. Reached by phone, two men in the embassy’s education section declined to discuss the incident.

Gord Arbeau, director of communications at McMaster, said the school was aware of the incident but was still looking into exactly what happened.

“We are concerned if anyone felt they would be under surveillance while attending an event on campus,” he said. “This would not be in keeping with our principles of free speech and respectful dialogue that we uphold at McMaster.”

"... there were more than 140,000 students from China in Canada in 2017... educators have expressed concern that student activism carried out with the support or direction of Chinese officials could corrode free speech by making students and scholars.... afraid to criticize the Communist Party."

Well that's worrisome!

This week, more than 10,000 people signed a petition trying to block a Tibetan woman from running for student president at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, because of her pro-Tibetan social media posts. The case was written up in Communist Party-run nationalist media in China.

/r/worldnews Thread Link - ashingtonpost.com