Meddling in internal affairs: Rebiya Kadeer, China and the MIFF

On the afternoon of 5 July internal affairs in the far north west of China turned violent and ugly. Thousands of angry citizens had taken to the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang to protest the killing of two Uyghur workers in Guangdong. Suddenly there was a flashpoint and matters turned violent. Fights led to gunfire. Eventually 184 people died, and another 1,600 were injured. Both Han and Uyghur alike suffered amid claim and counter-claim whose fault it was. It was the worst ethnic riot in China in decades.

China was anxious to blame the separatist movement for the riot. “The violence was masterminded by the separatist World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer”, exclaimed the official state mouthpiece Xinhua. Though their nominated culprit was inconveniently located in North America at the time, the regime seemed happier to scapegoat her rather than scrutinise the role played by the thousands of soldiers it had sent in to the city.

China also scolded Muslim Turkey for expressing its anger over events affecting their ethnic Turkic brothers and sisters in Xinjiang. They were denounced, alongside all other foreign critics, in the time-honoured fashion of “meddling in internal affairs”.

Perhaps China now considers Melbourne as an internal affair. Last week it demanded the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) censor a film about Kadeer. On Friday, Chinese consular officials telephoned Festival director Richard Moore and asked him to justify its inclusion of a film about the “criminal” Rebiya Kadeer in the festival. China urged Moore to withdraw the documentary "Ten Conditions of Love" by Melbourne film-maker Jeff Daniels about the exiled Uyghur.

Moore was nonplussed. “I didn't have any reason to justify the inclusion of the film in the festival,” the MIFF director told the consulate. Nor did he need one. The film will be rightly shown - its cinematic merit is justified on the subject matter alone. Melbourne will get the opportunity to see the documentary in a fortnight. Kadeer will be here herself to talk about it.

She currently lives in Washington State where the vastness of the Pacific separates her from China. Xinjiang is further away still. Rebiya Kadeer was a successful businesswoman and an activist for a people that were being swamped in their homeland by Han Chinese. In the 1990s she founded and directed a large trading company in north-western China. She was not only a champion for the rights of Uyghurs but became one of the most prominent women’s rights advocate in all of China. These activities came to an abrupt halt in August 1999. She was arrested and charged with harming national security. In a charge that sounds as disturbingly vague as that of Stern Hu affair, Kadeer was thought to be “providing secret information to foreigners”. Thumbing their nose at America, Chinese authorities waited until she was about to meet a group of US congressional staff on an official visit to China before making the arrest.

She was found guilty and got eight years. It was reduced to seven in 2004.

In 2005 she was released as part of a deal with the US on the grounds of “medical treatment”. Kadeer has now recovered. But the medical treatment that Kadeer really wants is the healing of her oppressed people.

The Christian Science Monitor interviewed Kadeer last week. She told them the riot wasn’t her fault. The Uyghurs were provoked by the police, she said. She also thought that plain clothed agents launched the riot as a false flag operation to give China the excuse to justify a larger crackdown. Maybe or maybe not - but it is no less plausible than saying she launched it.

Kadeer knows the old Chinese Communist state was bad. But the current model is worse: the Party has shred the last vestige of political philosophy in a naked grab to maintain power. It now relies on nationalism for fuel. China aggressively promotes its vision of Greater China and uses western mediatisation methods to enforce the vision on the homeland.

The most important skill China learned from the West was how to control your image. This is a primary consideration of politicians the world over. Former British civil servant Christopher Foster told in 2006 how media pressures had changed New Labour’s Cabinet meetings. The meetings were shorter and were no longer about decision making but instead reviewing the media impact of decisions already made.

The Chinese have also made a decision. Xinjiang is an internal province. But to the World Uyghur Congress the area is East Turkistan. With an articulate spokesperson like Kadeer on the loose, China knew it would be difficult to sell its message. Kadeer was careful never to attack the regime (she left that to her husband Sidik Rouzi). Instead her tactic was to get under their skin realising the Chinese were not leaving East Turkestan any time soon.

“I am extremely grateful for both Han and Uyghurs that protected each other in the riots,” she told CSM last week. “That should be the true relationship we should have with each other. But this Chinese government has created such a tragic situation, that it is not happening, generally, as it could.”

She is right. As state security, the Chinese Government were ultimately responsible for the deaths in Urumqi. This outcome is something they may repent in leisure. They may not be able to control ethnic tensions they have created even with their media sophistication.

The MIFF deserve praise for not buckling to the pressure. Kadeer is an important voice that speaks for more than just Uyghur values.

“Under Mao, during the Cultural Revolution, Uyghurs were badly treated.” Rebiya said. “But [at least] we could speak our language.”

Adelaide throws the baby out with the backwater

The long-time rivalry between Victoria and South Australia was stoked up earlier this week by Victorian Premier John Brumby’s offhand comment that Adelaide was a ‘backwater’. The comment hit home hard in the South Australian capital and has been the subject of intense media attention all week. Brumby made the remark while discussing the possible consequences of stopping the controversial Port Phillip Bay channel dredging project.

The Port of Melbourne wants to dredge the bay to allow bigger and more heavily laden ships to enter Port Phillip Bay, but the environmental effects of the project are still in question. The project was called into doubt after the head of the ANL shipping company said dredging should not include the mouth of the Yarra River. Brumby claimed that unless Victoria pushed ahead with the $1 billion plan to deepen the channel, Melbourne would end up like Adelaide. "If you want Melbourne to be a backwater, if you want Melbourne eventually to be an Adelaide – as someone described it the other day – well, don't do this project, and Melbourne will just die a slow death," he said. The dredging project has caused deep division in Melbourne because of environmental concerns.

But the pros and cons of the dredging project were immediate lost in the firestorm over the ‘backwater’ slur. The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper led the charge back with a series of xenophobic headlines about Victoria including its "party idiots Wayne and Corey" and its loss-making Grand Prix. However a poll in the same paper found more than half of voters agree with Brumby. Adelaide Mayor Michael Harbison also concedes there could be some truth to the backwater slur. "Certainly Premier Brumby's comments have attracted a lot of attention, I think it did touch a nerve. I think there are areas that we do need to move faster," he said. "Like Melbourne, we went through a few terrible years following the collapse of the state banks in Victoria and South Australia. And perhaps we haven't pulled out of that as quickly as Melbourne.

Writing in the Griffith Review Autumn 2007 edition “Divided Nation”, South Australian writer Tracy Crisp was also keenly aware of Adelaide’s limitations. She said South Australia’s growth in the last ten years was the slowest of all states except for Tasmania. She cites Australian Bureau of Statistics figures which said SA's population would peak at 1.65 million in 2032. It will then decline and age so that by 2051 the population would be 1.58 million of which 30 per cent will be over 65. Such zero growth is a key barrier to the continued economic and social development of the state. If it isn’t a backwater now, Crisp seemed to be saying, it will be in 40 years time unless it can somehow increase its population.

Brumby himself refused to take back the backwater comment despite SA Premier Mike Rann’s demand for an immediate apology. Rann then retaliated by saying Brumby's comment was "born of Victoria's insecurity" and stemmed from losing the $6 billion Air Warfare Destroyer contract to South Australia. Radio talkback discussions degenerated into dubious rival claims about the small size of Melbourne’s fish, to the superior quality of South Australian wines, beaches, and Aussie Rules football teams.

While Adelaide media ran hot with the backwater issue all week, reaction in the blog world was mixed. Adelaide Green Porridge Café pointed out that both Melbourne and Adelaide ranked highly in a Economist 2006 global survey of most liveable cities (Melbourne was second to Vancouver and Adelaide was 6th) . Fellow South Australian resident Angrypenguin was less forgiving, calling Melbourne boorish and “the pits as neighbours”. On the Victorian side of the fence Patra’s Other Place was embarrassed and “appalled at the comments” and said politicians should keep their thoughts to themselves when it comes to other parts of Australia. More whimsically, My Big World of Crap pointed out that “one thing that Adelaide will always have though is its crown as serial killer capital of Australia!”

While South Australia raged over the slur, the news that defence contractor BAE had successful gained an exemption to state anti-discrimination laws went relatively unheralded. BAE successfully argued in the courts it needed to prevent some employees with dual nationality (including citizens of China, Iran, Syria and Sudan) from working on top-secret projects with United States contractors. The South Australian government showed no concern for the loss of rights and instead welcomed the decision. State Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said "Billions of dollars in defence contracts for SA are now assured and I think more will come to SA now that this difficulty has been removed.” Financial issues matter more than human rights to the managers of this backwater.

Melbourne Days

Woolly Days is just back from a long weekend in Melbourne. The queen city is in the grip of racing fever with the Spring Carnival in full flow. With the Aussie Rules football season finished and the cricket season yet to take off, the carnival dominates the sports pages of Melbourne’s media. Yesterday it was Moonee Valley’s turn to take centre stage with the running of the W.S. Cox Plate. Fields of Omagh won the race by a nose in its final start. It was the horse’s second victory in the race having won in 2003. It is a mighty achievement as racing experts consider the Cox Plate to be Australia’s foremost weight for age race.

The Moonee Valley Racing Club is in the northern suburb of Moonee Ponds (home also to Dame Edna Everage, reputedly). In 1882 it was farmland north of Melbourne. William Samuel Cox took out a seven year lease on a property with the intention of creating a racetrack. The first meeting in 1883 had nine horses lining up for the Maiden Plate. The race resulted in a dead heat between Eveline and Pyrette. Cox held the position of Secretary of the Moonee Valley Racing Club until his death in 1895. In 1922 the racing club decided to run a weight-for-age race in honour of the course’s founder. The first Cox Plate had a prize of one thousand pounds. The imported English horse Violoncello won the race. Yesterday, the owners of Fields of Omagh took out $2 million of the total prize money of $3 million.

While the WS Cox Plate is the important race for the aficionados, it cannot compare with the Melbourne Cup in the affections of the masses. The race that stops a nation is on the first Tuesday of every November and merits a public holiday in Melbourne. It forms an important part of Melbourne’s sporting triangle between Grand Final Day and the Boxing Day cricket test. The first and last of those three events take place at Melbourne’s premier sporting arena, the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Site of the 1956 Olympics, the 152 year old MCG is holy soil. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, its all time record crowd of 130,000 were in attendance for a Billy Graham revivalist meeting in 1959. Redeveloped most recently for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in March, it now holds around 100,000 people. The ground’s owner the Melbourne Cricket Club has almost 60,000 full members and another 37,000 restricted members. There is a waiting list of 160,000 people and with 10,000 new members taken on each year it takes 16 years to become a member.

Not far from the MCG is the National Gallery of Victoria on St Kilda Road. It was founded in 1861 which makes it the oldest public art gallery in Australia. It is also the largest gallery in the country. The name of the gallery is confusing to many as Victoria is not a nation. However the gallery was named 40 years before Australian federation when Victoria was a self governing British colony. In the 1990s the NGV became so big it needed a second building to house its collection. The Ian Potter Centre was opened on nearby Federation Square to house the Australian collection while the original building holds its international offerings. The international collection is world-class and contains works by Blake, Canaletto, Constable, Cranach, David, Delacroix, Delauney, El Greco, Gainsborough, Magritte, Manet, Modigliani, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, Poussin, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Steen, Tintoretto, Turner, Van Dyck and Watteau.

Another 15 minute walk further down St Kilda Road is the Shrine of Remembrance. It is a massive war memorial built in memory of Victorians who died in World War I. It is the site of Melbourne’s annual observance of Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. In August 1921 the city set up a committee led by war hero John Monash to examine the idea of a memorial. They proposed a large monument off St Kilda Road directly visible from the centre of the nearby city. The shape of the shrine was inspired by one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus. Monash was one of the great leaders of the war, a rare officer not hidebound by military traditions. He brought his great energy to the shrine project and pushed it forward despite great criticism from the press due to its ornate design and cost. The criticism caused the government to abandon the project in 1926.

Monash hit back and turned the 1927 Anzac Day march into a 30,000 strong de-facto protest in favour of the original idea. The government quickly retracted its position and started to build the monument in December that year. Monash was trained as a civil engineer and he took charge of construction. He died in 1931 before the monument was completed. A remarkable man, he also led the State Electricity Commission to great success in his later years. Under his leadership the SEC developed Victoria's brown coal reserves as an electricity source and, by 1930, extended the power grid across the whole of the State. Despite his death and the depression years work continued on the monument. The shrine was dedicated on Remembrance Day 1934 in front of a crowd of 300,000 people. Inside the shrine is the Stone of Remembrance. The stone is aligned with an aperture in the roof so that a ray of light falls on the word LOVE at exactly 11am on 11 November, marking the hour and day of the Armistice which ended World War I. Thanks to the combined skills of an astronomer, a mathematician and the surveyor the Ray of Light will continue to do so for 5,000 years at least. However their preciseness was undone by legislation. The introduction of Daylight Saving meant the ray landed at 10am instead. To fix this, the Board of Trustees installed a mirror in the roof to ensure that the word is highlighted an hour later. Love reigns at the right time in Melbourne.

Brisbane 1, Melbourne 1

Its all square after yesterday’s intercity sporting squabble between Brisbane and Melbourne. But it wasn't reported that way in any of the Australia media. Their sports pages today were dominated by last night’s rugby league grand final. Even Melbourne’s parochial Aussie Rules dominated Herald Sun (Australia’s biggest selling newspaper) reported the Brisbane Broncos 15-8 win over their hometown team Melbourne Storm. That result won the Queensland clubs its sixth Australian rugby league grand final at Sydney’s Olympic stadium.

There were 80,000 in attendance (not a full house) to watch that game. For the third year in a row, the final was played at night time, not because it suited either set of fans, (it didn’t, it is a long weekend in Sydney but not in Brisbane or Melbourne) but because Channel Nine so decreed so that the game would take place in peak TV rating time. Earlier that day down in Melbourne, 25,000 people turned up to watch a top of the league football (soccer, the name of the sport, must always remain bracketed in multi-football Australia) clash between the Melbourne Victory and the Queensland Roar. The home team won 4-1 to continue its 100% record after six games in the A-League.

Their rugby league cousins were expected to make it a southern double. They had won the “minor premiership”, the home-and-away season that in most other countries establishes a team’s credentials for it to be declared the best. But not in Australia. Here finishing first merely gives you a favourable handicap to get to the grand final. Here, regardless of sport (league, union, Aussie Rules, football, basketball, netball and probably tiddlywinks), it comes down to one game as a decider. It’s a peculiarly Aussie notion of a “grand final”. You must win a decider. And in the league decider, Brisbane were the better team. Its not the first time either. The Brisbane Broncos were formed as an expansion club in a Sydney league in 1988 and by the time they reached adulthood they were playing in their sixth premiership decider. Like all previous five times, Brisbane won. And the enigmatic Wayne Bennett has coached all six deciders.

This one had its controversial moments. In the first half two dubious penalties gave Brisbane four easy points. But it was a second defining moment which put video refereeing in the spotlight. Brisbane were leading 14-8 when the admirably woolly headed Matt King dived over the line for what would have been his second try. But the video referee wrongly ruled that teammate Ryan Hoffman had knocked the ball on in trying to grab the kick in the preceding play. Brisbane captain and talisman Darren Lockyer sealed the game with a field goal leaving Melbourne seven points adrift and two scores adrift with less than ten minutes to go. Brisbane probably deserved the win, if only to celebrate the farewell appearance of its improbably suave square-jawed prop Shane Webcke. Webcke is the proverbial brick shithouse around a country manor. He was also a Brisbane legend for 12 years and it was his fourth appearance in a grand final. Although players and officials alike pretended it wasn’t about him, he easily dominated the media coverage before and after the game.

The earlier A-league clash between Melbourne and Brisbane also had its share of dodgy refereeing decisions. The game was played at Melbourne’s Docklands stadium which was designed for Aussie Rules and has a capacity of 50,000. It was Melbourne’s second ever game at the stadium after pulling in 40,000 for their win over Sydney FC a few weeks ago. Though the crowd wasn’t quite as impressive this time round, it was still a rousing atmosphere for the 100% league leaders. Melbourne’s skipper is journeyman Kevin Muscat who was renowned as a hard man when playing in the lower English leagues for Millwall. His most famous international moment was scoring the winning penalty for Australia v Uruguay in the World Cup qualifier at the MCG in 2001. He was at it again against the Roar scoring twice from the spot after very soft decisions against the visitors.

Brazilian striker Fred came back from a three match ban to also score a goal. He is not the same Fred that scored against Australia for Brazil in the world cup. The more famous Fred plays for Lyon in France. But the fact that two Freds are scoring goals internationally is a bit of a worry for those that prefer their Brazilian names to have more of a poetic ring about them. Fred may have a prosaic name but he is an integral part of Melbourne Victory’s push to become a force in the round ball game in this country. Barely one day before, the West Coast Eagles and Sydney Swans renewed their astonishingly tight rivalry in the wonderful AFL grand final with the Eagles gaining revenge for the previous year’s defeat by 1 point. But with no Melbourne team in the decider for the third straight year, the Victory are ideally placed to capitalise on the World Cup fever that struck Australia back in June. Melbourne remains Australia’s sporting capital and there are 3 million sports-mad fans waiting to hop on a successful bandwagon.

For now its congratulations to the Broncos and the West Coast Eagles. But watch out for the Victory and Roar. And watch out too for Benito Carbone. Late this afternoon, the little Italian genius, out here on a 4 game contract, destroyed Adelaide on his Sydney FC debut today, scoring one and making two other goals. And now Adelaide have signed Romario...viva calcio!

I want to ride my bicycle

Boys on bikes for a cause. Team Dave (and only one of us a true Dave) went 210km Around the Bay in a Day in October. Port Phillip Bay, that is, the big loopy thing reaches two big claws out around Melbourne. 110km to Queenscliff on the Bellarine Peninsula, then lunch, a 40 minute ferry (packed with pushies) to Sorrento, and then another tough 100 back to Melbourne.

At the end, beeline straight to the Docklands beertent where this photo was taken. Weary, happy, Radmeisters all

Dec 31, 1999
This pencil struggles, quivers and refuses to unleash its lead
as I cross-examine in the Supreme Court of my head
let no stone be unturned in defence
describe my whether before the fog gets too dense
We want the unvarnished story of the night before
before its harnessed truth descends into lore
Please tell us, did you enjoy your countdown time
were there two thousand ways to leave 1999?
on how many levels did you engage
was it worth the 1,700 km pilgrimage?
did you recover from your huffy party start
when you turned down the role of the starring tart?
unready to drink from this party cup
no imagination left for the group dress-up
in tokened effort hesitantly down the stairs
taking despondent steps between distracted prayers
But in spite of wishing you’d never therebeen
you risked the sceptred wrath of the gilded queen
your pointless effort to blend at the back
but majesty demands you be put to rack
you were released on bad behaviour from your party prison
a witness protection scheme of inspired girlish vision
Aided by alcohol and becoming teethkeen
you smiled up from under the guillotine
“give me the head of the Barry Pissed” she cried
who painted your crown in multicolours well-supplied
though others chanted a faint disgust
as your hooligan hair became crimson rust
the identikit mugshot of party photographs
will take its place in memories library of laughs
not the bastard offspring of asylum and penitentiary
but clowning to the music of the end of the century
worshipping at the floor of an alcoholic tabernacle
awaiting the visitation of oft-spoken tackle
their double daring drinking game wove its spell
and sextruth peeped out from under its shell
then the sudden arrival of an unwanted intruder
stops the party faithful from becoming lewder
and apart from a whimsical visit of the talking buttocks
lock and key were kept firmly on all jocks
but now the unknown ones had made their call
we were suddenly placed in an upside down ball
and to escape the outsiders, they fire-blazed a diversion
which inevitably led to alien conversion
they knew all their tactics were in vain
and surrendered to this parasite pain
reluctantly accepting this insidious encroaching
they turned their thoughts to midnight approaching
with champagne fluters and flares set off in the dark
for a private party in a public park
a caravanserai of wandering Turks
bowing to the Great god of Fireworks
fighting a curious foreboding as a city poises
then a twelve o’ clock eruption of war-like noises
eerily blasting off loud-silent shadows behind city buildings
shone fleeting shapes, disappearing blues, diaphanous rings
as it ended, excitement was assuaged
the beast of ennui became uncaged
a blanketing sense of misplaced importance
flagrantly fed a gnawing impotence
the book overshadowed by its glowing cover
gleefully shouts “thats all folks, its over”