Jail Time For Insulting Xi Jinping in Sydney?
Outlining the case for my complete and total innocence on all charges
I'm standing trial in Sydney on March 15, facing a potential three month prison sentence for holding a sign reading ''Fuck Xi Jinping'' while peacefully protesting. Watch my new YouTube video explaining why I am completely innocent:
When I held a sign insulting Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as part of a routine peaceful protest in Sydney, Australia, I honestly did not expect Chinese ultra-nationalist thugs to attempt to bash me as well as innocent bystanders. I have to be honest, the thought simply didn’t even cross my mind.
I expected somebody might possibly try to argue with me, debate me, regurgitate the same stock standard propaganda lines defending Xi Jinping that I hear from Beijing supporters every single day of my life. But I truly didn’t expect violent thugs to hurl racial slurs at my Taiwanese friends while attempting to bash an independent filmmaker and smash his camera in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses looking on.
And I certainly could never imagine that in the face of these injustices and this blatant criminality the New South Wales Police would effectively come down on the side of these thugs by arresting me and seeking to have me imprisoned for up to three months on offensive conduct charges.
Just think about this for a second and let it sink in: Apparently it is possible for Australian authorities to try to seek jail time against an Australian citizen for simply holding a sign insulting a genocidal dictator. A dictator responsible for the imprisonment of more than one million Uyghurs in concentration camps. It is 2023 and yet it’s like we still have anti-blasphemy laws on the statute books - it feels like New South Wales Police are trying to equate insulting Xi Jinping to insulting a religion or a God. I was not burning a Quran, I was insulting an unelected dictator responsible for absolutely atrocious crimes against humanity.
Xi Jinping exhorted his officials to show ‘’absolutely no mercy’’ in crushing Uyghurs. He urged the public to turn Uyghurs into ‘’rats scurrying across a street,’’ he appointed party bosses who urged officials to ‘’round up everyone who should be rounded up.’’ Chinese Communist Party officials were explicitly genocidal in their instructions: ‘’Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.’’ They would carry out forced abortions and sterilizations on Uyghur women to suppress the Uyghur birth rate while demolishing Uyghur grave yards and shrines. Millions disappeared into concentration camps ringed with barbed wire. The few who managed to escape detailed the extensive use of rape as a weapon of torture against inmates. I have Uyghur friends who have lost family members and loved ones to the genocide, a friend whose mother was taken because he attended protests alongside me in Brisbane, Australia. And I am supposedly the criminal here for insulting the dictator who brought these foul monstrosities to life? I am supposedly the one at fault for not showing sufficient sensitivity to the feelings of Chinese Communist Party supporters who think Uyghurs should be ‘’broken at the roots’’?
They say I am offensive for insulting Xi?! I say their genocide, their forced sterilisations, their colonial boarding schools, their rape, their torture, their executions offend against the dignity of every single human being on the planet. I went out there in Sydney and held that sign because it was an expression of my deepest political beliefs - my belief that dictatorship is wrong, that cruelty is wrong, that genocide is wrong. In every single case and in every single circumstance. I believe the Uyghur people should be free from oppression, I believe the Tibetan people should be free from oppression, I believe Hong Kongers, Taiwanese and Chinese people should all be free from oppression. Their common oppressor is Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party regime. To hell with diplomatic niceties when every single day innocents are being tortured and killed and persecuted by this regime. I went out there and held that sign and I was completely morally justified in doing so.
I was not targeting a ‘’majority Chinese ethnic area’’ by holding the sign in Eastwood as some Chinese Communist Party supporters and propagandists claim. Unlike the racist Chinese Communist Party propagandists who argue that Chinese Australians owe fealty to the Party based on blood ties, I strongly believe in multiculturalism and a pluralistic society. I am not against Chinese Australians or Chinese people, I am against the Chinese Communist Party regime, an unelected dictatorship that rules through fear. I have Chinese Australian friends who have seen Chinese Communist Party officials threaten their family members simply because their relatives attended a protest in Australia. They use mafia tactics against dissidents, threatening innocent relations. We are fighting for the human rights of the Chinese people by opposing these criminals.
I work alongside Chinese Australians in my activism and it was my Taiwanese friend who wrote the sign for me in Mandarin. The only reason I was in Eastwood at all was because I was campaigning to support my Tibetan Australian refugee friend Kyinzom Dhongdue who was a candidate for the seat of Bennelong which incorporates the area. We had formed a political party dedicated to opposing the Chinese Communist Party’s pressure tactics against Australians and we were both running under the Democratic Alliance banner. I was constantly traveling across Australia to support our candidates and that day I happened to be campaigning with Kyinzom at the Eastwood Shopping Centre Night Market because it was the main thoroughfare in the seat she was contesting. There were Labor and Liberal campaigners handing out flyers in the exact same street at the time.
I only decided to create a sign at the very last minute. I was originally going to simply write ‘’Down With The CCP,’’ but at the last moment I asked my Taiwanese friend to write ‘’Fuck Xi Jinping’’ in Chinese. I wanted our party position to be crystal clear - no respect for the dictator. No respect for tyrants. I had seen so many ‘’Fuck Scott Morrison’’ and ‘’Fuck Dutton’’ signs at protests across Australia over the years, so many ‘’Fuck Trump’’ or ‘’Fuck Biden’’ signs at American protests. I simply reasoned that Xi Jinping was far worse than any of these men because he was brazenly carrying out a genocide as we spoke. I knew we didn’t have explicit constitutional protections for free speech in Australia but I knew the High Court had previously found an implied right to freedom of expression in the Australian Constitution and I was aware of a previous court case where the beloved Sydney activist Danny Lim beat a police charge related to a sign he held calling Prime Minister Tony Abbott a ‘’c**t.’’ Whatever your opinions on Abbott, Xi Jinping is personally responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity. If the courts had protected insults against Abbott, I reasoned they would surely protect insults against a dictator.
The exact expression my Taiwanese friend wrote on the sign was ‘’Xi Jinping Cao Ni Ma.’’ The direct literal translation of this message is ‘’Xi Jinping fuck your mother.’’ My Taiwanese friend simply informed me that Cao Ni Ma was the closest equivalent to ‘’Fuck You’’ in the English langauge. Famous Chinese artists like Ai WeiWei had used the expression in artistic acts of defiance against the Chinese Communist Party - he published a nude photo of himself with only a ‘Caonima' hiding his genitals, with a caption roughly equivalent to ‘"fuck your mother, Communist Party Central Committee.’’
My Taiwanese friend finished the sign and I went out onto the street and held it up. At first, most people just laughed. There were quite a few young Chinese Australians of my age who took photos while grinning and laughing with their friends. It was only when an older man in a black coat and glasses began to point and shout at me that things kicked off. The first thing he said was very telling. Turning to a shopping centre manager, he told her: ‘’I think we should complain about this guy, I think he’s come down from Queensland, he’s the guy who wrote that China threatens Australia.’’ To me, it shows he didn’t have a problem with the swear word on the sign - he had a problem with me as an activist opposed to the Chinese Communist Party.
He accused me of insulting Chinese people so I told him I was only protesting against Xi Jinping. I said: ‘’This man has concentration camps, I don’t think it’s rude.’’ The man responded by motioning as though he was about to punch me before hurlibg racial insults at my Taiwanese friend, calling her a ‘’rotten banana.’’ This Chinese racial slur means ‘’yellow on the outside, white on the inside.’’ In other words, he was calling her a race traitor. He charged towards her and motioned as though he was going to physically assault my female friend, before charging at an independent filmmaker and threatening to punch him. The use of racial slurs against Asian Australians who opposed the CCP was striking, as were the repeated threats to bash a journalist. This was fascist, KKK-esque behavior, filmed in 4K visuals in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses. DidNew South Wales Police charge him with anything? Of course not.
At this point, another man named Shuang Zhang joined the pile on. He wore a big black sweatshirt and he was at least twice the size of me. He constantly circled me, motioning as though he were going to assault me. When I explained my protest by speaking about the Uyghur Genocide, he shouted: ‘’America has genocide, not Xi Jinping! Fuck your genocide!’’ He yelled ‘’Hong Kong is China’s!’’ Again, you cannot claim this bloke was simply upset because of a swear word on a sign - this was somebody who clearly opposed me because I was insulting the Communist Party.
Out of nowhere, Zhang launched a violent and completely unprovoked assault on independent filmmaker Chris de Bruyne, placing him in a bear hug from behind and attempting to take control of his camera and smash it. When Chris managed to break free of his grasp, Zhang tore the sign out of my hands and ripped it to pieces while shouting ‘’Fuck you!’’ Only four minutes had elapsed from when I first began holding the sign. New South Wales Police had to charge Zhang with assault, his thuggish actions were simply too brazen and obvious. But they let him off with the slightest slap on the wrist, without informing Chris that the case was even going to court.
New South Police argue I incited the crowd to assault Chris and myself but the footage shows that I kept my hands behind my back the entire time, never laying a finger on a single person. I repeatedly emphasized the fact that I was a peaceful protester and didn’t even attempt to defend myself when Zhang ripped the sign from me and threatened to punch me. I stayed calm even as the man in the black coat kept trying to goad me by calling me a coward. I shouted: ‘’I’m not a coward, my hands are behind my back, come hit me.’’ It wasn’t meant to incite violence - I was simply trying to stand my ground and demonstrate I wouldn’t be intimidated by their constant threats to attack me.
Somehow after all this, I am the one facing court and potential imprisonment. I’m completely confident, I have absolutely no doubt that I will beat the charges and prove my complete and total innocence. The great barrister Anthony Morris KC will represent me when the trial begins on March 15 and he will present a formidable case. To the best of my knowledge I don’t believe Xi Jinping has filed a complaint for offensive conduct with the New South Wales Police so they will have to explain who exactly was offended by my sign insulting him.
In the famous Danny Lim free speech case Lim v Regina, the court found that: ‘’Politicians and their views are often subject to criticism in public. This is an essential and accepted part of any democracy. That criticism can often extend to personal denigration or perhaps even ridicule, but still maintain its essential character as political comment. There is no reason to conclude that the Prime Minister, as the leader of the Federal Government should be treated any differently to any other person who holds or seeks political office.’’ I invite the prosecutor to try to explain why denigration and ridicule of a brutal dictator must be banned when denigration and ridicule of democratic leaders is protected by the Constitution. I don’t see how he can do it. This farcical prosecution seems to me to be a gigantic waste of public resources, a stupid exercise in futility by New South Wales Police who might not even know who Xi Jinping is. I mean, seriously, it doesn’t look like they know what my protest was even about. This is a pathetic attack on free speech in this country and I look forward to completely dismantling their case in court.
If you support my work fighting for free speech against dictatorship, please help me keep going. I would be endlessly thankful if you would consider subscribing to my Patreon for as little as the cost of one coffee a month. You can sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/drewpavlou Thank you so much.
Good onya M8! Tyrannical Megalomaniac's are completely unacceptable at the best of times, but Tyrannical Genocidal Megalomaniac's REALLY have to be shut down. At least "Benevolent Dictator's" can be reasonable sometimes..
习近平操你妈