Hu's Heckler: Online fallout

Thanks to Jeremy Goldkorn for pointing out that somebody has uploaded the CNN video of Chinese President Hu Jintao being heckled by a FLG practitioner during his speech at the White House on Thursday. Chinese censors may have blacked out the live TV signal and all CNN replays, but it's all over the internet. And Chinese chatrooms are re-posting and analyzing the photos from the Great White House Lawn Debacle. This one (via Imagethief) has a shot of Mrs. Hu, scowling next to a smiling Laura Bush.

Meanwhile Roland Soong over at ESWN digs up a rather fascinating revelation: according to photos on this website belonging to photographer Darrin Zammit Lupi, Dr. Wang Wenyi - Thursday's heckler who was accredited into the official press coverage pool via the FLG-run publication Epoch Times - also managed to break through the security detail and confronted former President Jiang Zemin when he was on a trip to Malta in 2001. I have e-mailed the photographer asking him to confirm the authenticity of this photo and describe what happened in detail. When he gets back to me I'll update this post. [NOTE: Photo taken down for copyright reasons. Click here to see it.]

UPDATE (4/24): Mr. Lupi responded to my email with the following account of what happened:

from what I recall, she'd been shadowing jiang for a couple of days, turning up at a few of the events the media were covering.... I believe she had press credentials of some sort, though not issued by Maltese for purpose of covering the visit.... still, whatever she had was good enough for some cops providing security, I suppose.

On the day in question, Jiang was doing an unscheduled walkabout around Malta's ancient former capital city, Mdina.... no one gave Wang a second look.  As Jiang descended some stairs from a terrace overlooking the bastions, she somehow slipped through the ring of plain clothes police officers around him, and said something....there was some shouting, and she was immediately pulled away by the security guards.  Jiang immediately instructed that she be brought back to him, and that's when the moments I'd photographed took place.... she very calmly accused him of killing and persecuting Falun Gong practicioners, to which Jiang angrily and animatedly, with wide hand gestures, replied that the Falun Gong were killing themselves.

Then he brushed her off and the police took her away again... she was held for a while at a local police station, then released without charge. She became something of a celebrity in the following days. Prior to her protest, the police had been keeping Falun Gong and other protestors well away from Jiang, making sure he wouldn;t even see or hear them.

Chinese netizens were already speculating that the White House or somebody in the U.S. government had allowed her into the press stand on purpose, given how long it took before she was led away. (Roland quotes more such speculation here.) Then there's the added issuse that even many Chinese who dislike their regime equally dislike FLG. For a taste of those sentiments check out Bingfeng here and here. I have a lot of Chinese friends who share similar views - people who also have a habit of saying very unflattering things in private about various Chinese leaders and government departments.

But what has really upset a lot of Chinese people was Bush's rude and very public yank on Hu's sleeve. See Imagethief's post about the reaction of his Chinese co-workers. Lead sentence: "They think Bush is a protocol-impaired dweeb."

The saddest thing about Thursday's White House Lawn Diplo-Debacle is that many Chinese who generally dislike the Chinese Communist Party have now turned against the U.S. government. Roland cites a Hong Kong newspaper poll with the following results:

Issue: The White House master of ceremony announced the playing of the national anthem of the Republic of China.
    - 33% said that the American goverment deliberate set this up to insult China
    - 21% said that the American government was of poor quality
    - 23% said that it was an unintentional mistake
    
Issue: When the female FLG member disrupted Hu Jintao's speech, she was allowed to go on for almost three minutes before the secret service agents removed her.
    - 79% said that the American government should apologize
    -   9% said that the American government should not apologize

Issue: How should China protest against what occurred?
    - 43% said China should demand an apology from the American government
    - 22% said China should lodge a diplomatic protest
    -   6% said China should cancel the recently signed purchase contracts

Issue: Do you think that the United States is a trustworthy partner?
    - 17% said USA is a trustworthy partner
    - 62% said USA is not a trustworthy partner

Youch. And this is from people in relatively Westernized Hong Kong.

For more news and blogger coverage from Reuters and Global Voices Online, click here:

Comments

[lukepost]

Rebecca MacKinnon,you dipped this news much .
thank you for your hard work for china .
and invite you to my miscellaneous
lukepost blog (http://lukepost.blog.hexun.com/)

[bobby fletcher]

Danny, I emailed Mr. Bloom the US State Department press debunking Epoch Times "Auschwit" story (where Dr. Wang was the lead researcher of), I got the following reply from Mr. Bloom:

"Thanks for writing, and I agree with you. I am not a member of FalunGong and yes, they sometimes do play fast and loose with the FACTS. Iagree with you, and I will be careful with what I write in the future.I was only praising her for speaking up to the a brutal dictator. Thatis good PR for freedom. But the stories that Falung GOng plays fastand loose with, yes, we must be careful. I think many of the FG peopleare fanatics. and their leader, Master Li, he is quite silly,believing in UFOs etc."

[danny bee]

Bobby Fletcher, I never gave you or anyone else permission to post my private email to you. That is against Internet etiquette.

You wrote, above: I emailed to Mr. Bloom a copy of the US State Department press debunking Epoch Times "Auschwit" story (where Dr. Wang was the lead researcher of), and then I got the following reply from Mr. Bloom (which he did NOT give me permission to repost anywhere, but I did anyway):

"Thanks for writing, and I agree with you. I am not a member of FalunGong and yes, they sometimes do play fast and loose with the FACTS. Iagree with you, and I will be careful with what I write in the future.I was only praising her for speaking up to the a brutal dictator. Thatis good PR for freedom. But the stories that Falung GOng plays fastand loose with, yes, we must be careful. I think many of the FG peopleare fanatics. and their leader, Master Li, he is quite silly,believing in UFOs etc."

Posted by: bobby fletcher | May 17, 2006 at 12:11 PM

But bobby fletcher told me he was Charles Liu when he wrote to me. Strange...

[bobby fletcher]

Let me get this straight - Danny Bee is Dan Bloom, and he's posting his own Taipei Times OpEd article?

Sorry that connection wasn't obvious.

[Makina]

Hey guys,

I thought you might be interested in reading this piece about Bobby Fletcher/Charles Liu who's commented on your blog. He's been all over the blogosphere discrediting the organ harvesting report. Have a look.

Western Standard (Alberta): Sowing Confusion; Embarrassed by reports of live organ harvesting, China's sympathizers launch a high-tech disinformation campaign
http://organharvestinvestigation.net/media/WesternStandard_040907.htm

April 9, 2007 Monday
Final Edition

HEADLINE: Sowing Confusion; Embarrassed by reports of live organ harvesting,

China's sympathizers launch a high-tech disinformation campaign

BYLINE: Kevin Steel, Western Standard

He posts his messages everywhere under several different names on Internet blogs and discussion groups. He writes letters to the editor anywhere and sends e-mails to anyone--anyone who might take seriously shocking evidence that the Chinese government "harvests" and sells live organs from political prisoners. His main message is that the Falun Gong--the group which first brought evidence of live organ harvesting to light--and the Epoch Times newspaper that broke that story are spreading propaganda against China's Communist government. And he's not even Chinese. He is Charles Liu, a 40-year-old Taiwanese-born technology consultant who lives in Issaquah, Wash., and does business in China.

Liu has been so active and so pro-Beijing in his writings that some Falun Gong supporters--in particular Epoch Times reporter Jana Shearer--have accused him of being an agent for the Chinese government, waging a disinformation campaign against them, trying to confuse people, and deliberately wasting everyone's time.

It's a charge that upsets Liu, who dismisses it as "a bunch of kooky friends making unfounded accusations. It's just a bunch of blog BS." As for why he devotes so much energy to attacking the Falun Gong and the organ harvesting allegations, he says, "My position is that I simply don't agree with their brand of politics, because I observed their politics turning from anti-Communist party, to anti-China, . . . and recently it's morphed into this anti-Chinese hysteria and that's going to be hurting people," he says. As an Asian-American, he says he decided to speak up.

He doesn't really explain, when asked, why he started a blog last year called "The Myth of Tiananmen Square Massacre" under the name of Bobby Fletcher (one of his online aliases, which he also uses to comment on the Western Standard's online blog). On that blog, he pushes the minimal 250 casualty figure that the Chinese government has always maintained died that night in 1989 (more reliable estimates put the figure at at least ten times that).

Liu's actions mirror disinformation campaigns waged by the Chinese government in the past. Typically, these include the deliberate spreading of false or misleading facts to sow confusion or doubt among the conflicting accounts. The classic example is the Tiananmen Square massacre; the Chinese government has maintained that no one died in the square itself, that there was only pushing and shoving on the streets around the square, resulting in a few military casualties. Overseas, the CCP relies on its United Front Work department, part of the Chinese intelligence service, to propagate its message. During the Cold War, the Soviets employed many overseas flunkies through their Disinformation Department.

Former Canadian MP David Kilgour, who co-authored a report on China's macabre organ harvesting industry, has received many propaganda e-mails from Liu. For instance, Liu has written repeatedly that a U.S. congressional committee looked into the organ harvesting allegations and found nothing.

"[David] Matas and I gave evidence to that subcommittee and got support from both the Republican chairman and the Democratic vice-chair," says Kilgour. "I just came to the conclusion he was trying to waste my time, and I have other things to do."

Winnipeg-based human rights lawyer, and Kilgour's co-author, David Matas, really doesn't know what to make of Liu. "I don't know who he is, but what he does is spend a lot of time replicating nonsense to defend the Chinese government," Matas says.

The only concern Matas has is that Liu seems to know who he and Kilgour met with in the United States to discuss their report. Matas discovered Liu had sent e-mails to politicians--and their staff--prior to the meetings. "The only people who would have that information would potentially be the Chinese government. I can't imagine how Liu would know we were meeting with those people," Matas says. "We're not super-secretive, but you can't find information on the Internet or in any public place about who we're meeting with, where and when." He himself has received at least 10 e-mails from Liu, all of which he's ignored. Maybe Matas is onto something with that approach.

GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: CP, Dave Cahn; David Kilgour (left) and David Matas, co-authors of a report on China's organ harvesting industry: How does Liu know who they're meeting with?

LOAD-DATE: March 29, 2007

[A Paul]

http://news.google.com/news?q=Kilgour+Matas It's not hard to see Kilgour and Matas's schedule, considering that FLG spammed the hell out of it.

And worth noting is http://falungongpolitics.blogspot.com/2007/04/epoch-times-reporters-gone-wild.html. The pot calling the kettle black eh?

[mason]

This is ridiculous that no mainstream news agencies are covering this. People are being tortured and killed each day and websites like cnn.com or msnbc.com don't even have one article that aims to bring these issues to light. They'd rather run stories like "zebra escapes from local zoo" along with 10 min of home video cam footage of a man chasing a zebra around through his neighborhood. Wtf is wrong with them? The only explanation that I can think of is that all of the News Corp Rupert Murdoch owned media outlets aren't trying to prevent public awareness about this in order to preserve america's "Relation$" with china. Our media is on a fast track to becoming as censored as theirs... have you seen what their routers look like there? They actually have a built in “content filter” that is attached to the circuit (wireless internet circuit board pics). It's just incomprehensible that the only word about this getting out is through pamphlets being passed around at colleges from escaped victims or on non-mainstream news sites such as this. At the rate we're going, this could be happening in America right now and we would still have not one clue about what is going on.