By In recent months China has launched quite the bullying campaign against Australia and the latest effort to intimidate Australia has been the continuous threats against the city of Melbourne for screening a film about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer:
THE Chinese Government has threatened to end Melbourne’s 29-year sister-city relationship with the city of Tianjin if Lord Mayor Robert Doyle does not intervene to stop the screening of a film about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer at the Town Hall today.
Mr Doyle has rejected the Chinese demands – as well as intense pressure from his own councillors to stop the screening of the controversial film. [Andrew Bolt]
It will be interesting to see if the city eventually gives into Chinese demands.
What is even more interesting is that the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd speaks fluent Mandarin and the Chinese have soured on him because he uses his Chinese language ability to speak directly to Chinese citizens instead of being filtered by Beijing translators.
1:50 am on August 9th, 2009 1
I hope an earthquake in the magnitude of 8 strike that crummy arrogant third world crapola hole of a country.
2:44 am on August 9th, 2009 2
Tom: Are you talking about China or Australia? (Ha, ha)
7:56 am on August 9th, 2009 3
I'm talking about your bankers, China. They're also on a major shopping spree with the money that they collected from you, buying up all the natural resources around the world, raising prices for everything, and basically pricing everyone out. They are becoming supremely arrogant to boot.
8:02 am on August 9th, 2009 4
haha Go Melbourne! Boohoo if you loose your sister city relationship. Apparently the Chinese will never understand the concept of free speech. Whether the Uighur film is worth seeing or not, whether it is completely truthful or not, The Chinese government has no right to threaten Australia for showing the film, even though the government of Australia itself has no right to pull a film from a private film festival.
2:55 pm on August 21st, 2009 5
it's not about the socalled "freedom", but about the "terrorism"..do u know how many inoncent citizen killed in the XINJIANG riot which lead by Rabiye?
12:06 am on August 22nd, 2009 6
Could you imagine the Chinese reaction if the US tried to pressure China over screening a movie about the life of Osama Bin Laden? It would be absurd just like China's attempts to pressure Australia over this movie is absurd.