Yeah! We only want the US government to be collecting that information.< /sarcasm>
SBS Australia is partially taxpayer-funded, and is often pro-China. however, a moment of clarity. see ***WeChat involvement:
6 Aug: SBS Australia: Cowardice: Australian universities accused of bowing to Chinese pressure
The University of NSW has been accused of succumbing to the rage of Chinese students after deleting social media posts about human rights in Hong Kong. Experts say its not an isolated incident and that universities across the country are confronting a swell of political pressure from China.
By Eden Gillespie
UNSW tweeted an article on Friday with the headline: China needs international pressure to end Hong Kong wrongs.
The piece included a quote from the Australian Director of Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson, who claimed: now is a pivotal moment to bring attention to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Hong Kong”.
But shortly after the piece was posted onto social media, a barrage of Twitter users who self-identified as Chinese students at the university, threatened theyd withdraw from UNSW unless it was removed...
Fergus Ryan is a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
He told The Feed that a carefully coordinated campaign was executed on the Chinese messaging application ***We Chat, where organisers advised supporters to use the hashtag stop the wrong political view in our university...
According to government data, more than 152,000 Chinese students enrolled in universities in 2018...
The fact that these students think they can cancel someone, they can silence someone is because they understand they hold this power, Xu told The Feed.
They pay all these fees, they are big in number. Thats why theyre doing this in the first place....
More recently, the University of Queensland was met with a barrage of criticism for suspending student activist Drew Pavlou in May after he staged several pro-Hong Kong protests last July...
Pavlou told The Feed that he was assaulted three times at one of the protests...
This year, Pavlou began Supreme Court proceedings to sue the university, as well as its chancellor and vice-chancellor. He is seeking $3.5 million in damages for breach of contract and defamation...
A report from Human Rights Watch found Chinese authorities conduct surveillance on both Chinese students and academics...
Pavlou said while he continues to receive death threats, the greatest victims are Hong Kong and Chinese pro-democracy students who have been intimidated into silence and fear what will happen if they speak out....
The death threats continue but Im still so committed to the fight, he said.
The hope is that with a proper non-profit, wed have a proper alliance and we can build a mass movement to defend democracy.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/cowardice-australian-universities-accused-of-bowing-to-chinese-pressure