Section 14

The Greens reported on Friday that Falun Gong had been kicked out of the Cuba Carnival and Chinese New Year celebrations in Wellington.

[Green Party Wellington City spokesperson Iona] Pannett said “this issue once again raises serious questions about the Council’s commitment to freedom of speech in the city. This decision infringes on Falun Gong’s right to free speech guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and to any other group or individual who wants to speak on issues that the Council does not agree with.”

Greens co-leader Russel Norman, writing on FrogBlog, says

The word is that the Council told them that the Chinese Embassy had paid for the big Chinese New Year celebration and the Chinese Embassy did not want Falun Gong in the parade, so they had to go.

“The word” presumably comes from Falun Gong. Wellington City Council would deny any connection.

Norman rightly continues:

If the story is accurate then the City Council is bending to the will of a foreign government to suppress freedom of expression in return for money.

Regular Section 14 readers will remember that Falun Gong were also excluded from Wellington’s Christmas parade.

One of the biggest upsides of globalisation is that as well as Coca-Cola and Versace, people in dictatorships like China 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.

Close on Auckland’s heels, Wellington City Council is also considering cracking down on capitalism’s colour. (Dominion Post, p.A8, Billboard backlash hits capital). Urban planning director Ernst Zollner says, “increasing complaints about billboards meant Wellington bylaws would be revisited early next year.” Whether that’s because there are more billboards or just more whining isn’t clear.

A European city with no billboards.

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:

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