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

[jennyb]

Sorry but Falun Gong practitioners don't persecute CCP. The opposite is true. So, they're not entities on the same level.

Sorry but there's a difference between constant and lasting repression and diplomatic gaffes. So, if people who dislike CCP regime now really turned against US for a protocol mistake, I think they have a serious problem of priorities.

I think there are a lot of substantial issues in China worth our time more than a diplomatic incident.

[mahathir_fan]

The Chinese should not place such an important event on Hu's visit to the US. China US relations are very problematic. When China sells too many stuff to the US it gets in trouble. I wonder, the last time Dr. Mahathir went to the White House, someone had to pay Jack Abrhamoff one million dollars for the visit. According to dr. Mahathir, these are standard procedures to visit the US president.Wonder if China had to make such payments as well.

Hu's next visit is more important which is in Saudi Arabia. He needs to secure oil interest for China. In the US, while it is a big market for China, China actually needs to reduce its dependence on the US anyway.

It reminds me of the days of Dr. Mahathir where US-Malaysia relations always took a turn for the worst whenever our leaders met face to face.

[mahathir_fan]

I believe that the fallout of this protest is again similar to Tiananmen. A win situation for the hardliners within the CPC.

The Tiananmen incident was a big mistake for reforms had already began since 1982 when China created its new constitution. Because of Tiananmen,the hardliners within the CPC were able to use the incident to arm twist the reformers within the CPC to give up their influences. Case in point, Zhao ZiYang was put under house arrested. There is no saying how many more pragmatic reformers within the CPC party that has their power and influences stripped from them as a result of the civil unrest created by the Tiananmen incident in 89.

The hardliners within the CPC is likely to use this FLG incident to arm twist the reformers within the CPC to take tougher and stricter measures to curb the FLG practitioners.

Hu, as well as other powerful reformers within the CPC party, in order to consolidate their influences is likely going to be pressured into responding to the hardliners. If he doesn’t do so, his influences will wane, althoght it is unlikely that he would be put under house arrest. This incident is not serious enough to warrant such actions.

But definitely, the pragmatic reformers within the CPC party now has to answer to their hardliners how they would respond to this incident as well as other gaffs that happened on that day. It is likely that the pragmatic reformers within the CPC will now have to pretend to play the “tough guy” for a while to fend of any attempts to discredit them by the hardliners.

[VITRUVIUS TECHNOLOGOS]

It's very revealing how bloggers in China and the World respond to the publishing the vid scene on 'youtube', judging on the vid's comments & your notes on bloggers.
The natural national biases are evident as well as intolerance to dissent which is predominant mode
in the bloggersphere of which I'm
rather sceptical as far censorship
and politcorrectness is concerned
however I agree with chinese proverb that one image is worth thousand words that's why I'm posting on 'my youtube' some conroversial original experimantal newsreels as cinema archives probe the netsen audience with controversial cinematic experience:
At VITRUVIUS Technologos Logosphere the filmmaker icon image to view vitruvius publishing abstract multimedia visual intelligence film design as Cinemasphere

[DJB]

Thanks for posting this Rebecca.
We'll be following your journeys and conversations here at Philippine Commentary.

[Monkey from Hong Kong]

Many overseas Chinese do not support the current fake Mainland Chinese CCP totalitarian government!

As a Chinese myself, I admire the the lady who has spoken right at Hu's face so that he should finally realize that being a totalitarian is shameful and deserves to be spit at by his countrymen!

[Monkey from Hong Kong]

Many overseas Chinese do not support the current fake Mainland Chinese CCP totalitarian government!

As a Chinese myself, I admire the the lady who has spoken right at Hu's face so that he should finally realize that being a totalitarian is shameful and deserves to be spit at by his countrymen!

[bobby fletcher]

Let's not forget Dr. Wang is the lead researcher for Epoch Times NY's convienently timed "Sujiatun Auschwitz" allegation that has since being discredited:

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=April&x=20060416141157uhyggep0.5443231&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html

US government knew the concentration camp claim was bunk before 3/21, I won't speculate why we sat this news until 4/15, a Friday afternoon (knowing it won't make news until Monday.)

Given Dr. Wang's profession and New Yorks recent string of grisly illegal organ harvesting cases, it's not hard to see how she put two and two together and rehashed the 70's era anti-communist tall tales of people sentenced to vivisection during Cultural Revolution.

[Safwaan zamakda]

Communism is wrong. FULL STOP!!!

[Danny Bee]

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/05/03/2003305933

Shouting for freedom, not heckling
OPED commentary

When New York-based Epoch Times reporter and Falun Gong practitioner
Wang Wenyi (王文怡) interrupted the White House welcoming ceremony for
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Washington last month, her
protest was heard round the world. Hauled away by police and arrested,
Wang later told reporters that her protest had not been planned but
occurred spontaneously when she found herself standing up on a
reporters' news bleacher and facing Hu just a few meters away.
The media has been calling Wang a "heckler", when in fact, she should
be called a protester. She was doing much more than merely heckling a
Chinese communist dictator, she was boldly and confidently protesting
the brutal treatment of Falun Gong followers inside China.

Her protest was well-received in most democratic nations of the world,
and especially here in Taiwan.

In a recent article she wrote for the Epoch Times, Wang, who had
gained access to the White House ceremony with a press pass from the
newspaper, said her original intention had been simply to report on
the event.

`Whenever a lone individual stands up to face down a brutal dictator,
in any part of the world, at any time, those who value freedom and
democracy must applaud her or him.'

But when she saw US President George W. Bush shaking hands with Hu, in
full view of the invited guests and live on television around the
globe, she said she felt compelled by conscience to shout out her
protest.

"I cried out for those who have been tortured and suffered genocidal
persecution," Wang wrote, adding that her protest was a matter of life
and death, as far as she was concerned. "I acted in a way consistent
with the American spirit. I also acted to protect the dignity of
America and humankind."

Wang said that she could not pass up an opportunity to confront Hu and
Bush over alleged reports that China is removing organs from living
Falun Gong practitioners and selling them -- charges which Beijing
denies.

"The two national leaders who have the best chance of stopping this
were right in front of me," Wang later recounted. "Where else could I
have a chance like this? How could I not speak out at that moment? Hu
needs to hear this, for his own sake, for the sake of Chinese people."

Indeed, Wang acted in the true spirit of democratic protest and free
speech, and she should be considered as a heroine for her actions that
day.

Whenever a lone individual stands up to face down a brutal dictator,
in any part of the world, at any time, those who value freedom and
democracy must applaud her or him. Like the lone man in Beijing who
famously stood up to confront tanks in Tiananmen Square in June 1989
during the government-ordered massacre.

So let's get one thing absolutely straight: Wang was not a heckler,
but a freedom fighter. Her name should be honored, not reviled.

When Wang was asked by US reporters after the incident if she felt
that her outburst at the White House had compromised her status as a
journalist, she replied: "No matter what kind of title I have, I
consider myself to be a human being first. So humanity surpasses
everything when you see people being killed."

How did China and the US react to Wang's outburst that day? Well, Bush
apologized to Hu, and Hu said he accepted the apology. But outside
diplomatic circles, a letter to the editor of the Washington Post
championed Wang's unplanned but passionate protest.

"I was outraged to read that Wang Wenyi faces a possible prison
sentence of up to six months for shouting her outrage at the Chinese
President," wrote Heather Brutz of Silver Spring, Maryland. "Wang is a
member of Falun Gong. China has jailed members of this religious
group, put them in labor camps, and may even have harvested members'
organs and sold them abroad. This persecution has come about because
of Falun Gong members' peaceful protests in China. In the face of such
atrocities, Wang's behavior is admirable ... Through her nonviolent
actions, Wang shows a clear understanding of the ideals of democracy."

And there you have it: A lone individual stands up to a powerful
tyrant, in full view of the public and the television cameras, showing
the world the truth, and letting her voice become a sound heard round
the world.