An excluded guest’s story

Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Chin Jin is an Australian citizen. He chairs the Federation for a Democratic China, a group dedicated to the achievement of democracy in mainland China. dsgu@yahoo.com.

I am one of the Greens guests to Hu’s address to the Australian Parliament.

I was very touchy in reading your article published on 26 October in The Sun Herald, Howard corrodes our core beliefs (For more detailed information, see Howard humiliates our Parliament and betrays our democracy for Hu.)

I want to say that the occurrence in Canberra last Friday put the Australian Government and Chinese leader Hu Jintao on test and both failed. Not long ago, Hu said the CCP would not employ their traditional approach in dealing with opposition. Last Friday was a test to his words, Hu failed to keep his political promise and employed the same measures to pressure the Australian Government to ban three Greens guests access to his speech. That meant that what the Chinese leaders say is one thing, and what they do is another thing.

The Howard Government also failed the test. The principle and spirit of democracy could be thrown into garbage when confronting the lure of economical interests.

Senator Brown and his colleagues are great heroes of this democratic country. They stand up and speak up for the values of democracy, for those who are suffocated in China, including Tibet. His man of courage and principle had set me up a brilliant example to achieve democracy and freedom in China no matter how many hardships I will encounter.

I wish to read more essays like this you write.