Section 14

The Dominion Post reports today (p A5) that Wellington City Council has kicked the Falun Gong out of this year’s Christmas Parade. In previous years the religious group has taken part in the parade and won awards for their float featuring Chinese drummers and dancers.

Falun Gong spokesman Chris Thomas said he had tried to register the group in the Wellington Christmas parade but was told by organisers that, as the parade was being “streamlined”, they would not be included.

“When we asked what we could do to make the parade criteria, we were only told that we were not going to be in it. We feel that was an inadequate answer.”

The biggest concern is that city officials have been pressured (either explicitly or implicitly) by China to exclude Falun Gong from council-sponsored events. As a public entity, the city council must ensure that it doesn’t use its sponsorship of cultural events as a way to censor political or religious expression.

Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast is currently in China on a sister-city jolly and presumably doesn’t want to put the free trips at risk. Others on the trip have said they have no intention of bringing up human rights questions because things aren’t perfect here. This is a disgraceful moral equivalence. In New Zealand when the ruling socialist elite want to vilify a dissident religious group they call them “chinless scarf-wearers” - they don’t shoot them and then cut out their internal organs.

One of the biggest upsides of globalisation is that as well as Coca-Cola and Versace, people in dictatorships also get a taste for other Western goods like freedom of expression. It would be a travesty if the reverse were to occur and we imported this dictatorship’s repressive policies into New Zealand.

UPDATE 22/11/06: Wellington City Council has replied to my enquiry:

Dear Mr Darnton

Further to your recent e-mail to the Wellington City Council regarding the Christmas Parade and Falun Gong, I hope the following comments are helpful.

The Wellington City Council was recently handed responsibility for managing the annual Christmas Parade. Based on the feedback we have received about the last few parades there was a need to “tighten” things up both in terms of length, quality of floats and parade units. Additional bands and performers were added along with new and better quality floats to provide greater emphasis on Christmas and family entertainment.

The aim of improving the parade and making room for new elements has limited the number of groups able to participate. Each year parade organisers are approached by numerous community groups and not all are able to be accommodated.

Any implication that influence from the Chinese government led to the Falun Gong not being able to participate in the parade is not correct.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Dictatorship, Censorship, China, Wellington City, Religious Expression. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.