UQ's Bullying Legal Threats - Thread
I oppose the existence of Confucius Institutes on campuses while the Chinese state pursues genocide against Uyghur Muslims. Millions languish in concentration camps in the largest internment of a people based on ethnicity since the Holocaust.
I oppose the existence of Confucius Institutes on campuses while the Chinese state pursues genocide against Uyghur Muslims. Millions languish in concentration camps in the largest internment of a people based on ethnicity since the Holocaust.
To me, the fact my university maintains ties with the Chinese state and allows a Confucius Institute to operate on our campus while this genocide occurs is one of the greatest moral outrages of our time. This complicity means our hands are stained with the blood of Uyghurs.
I've been an extremely vocal critic of UQ's ties with the Chinese state and the operation of a Confucius Institute on our campus. Our university is particularly close to the CCP - the Chinese government has actually funded at least four UQ courses. abc.net.au/news/2019-10-1…
In July 2019, I held a rally calling for UQ to completely cut ties with the Chinese state while this genocide rages on. while holding a peaceful campus sit-in, I was assaulted by a number of pro-CCP men, some of whom were not students:
In the aftermath, I was named by Chinese state media and condemned as a ''seperatist'' by Brisbane PRC Consul General and UQ Professor Xu Jie. After the Consul General's statement, I was sent dozens of death threats, and needed campus security to attend my classes.
UQ never dismissed Consul General Xu Jie from his university post, even after he threatened my safety. UQ put out a milquetoast statement affirming their commitment to ''peaceful protest,'' but behind the scenes threatened to cancel my enrollment if I held another rally.
When I requested to meet with the Vice-Chancellor about what was happening, I was ignored and rebuffed. When I ran for the UQ Senate so he would have to meet with me, UQ officials recruited a pro-CCP candidate to run against me to stop me.
When this pro-CCP candidate posted a statement on Chinese social media attacking me as ''anti-China,'' it went viral. Consequently, I was assaulted while campaigning, and my social media was inundated with death threats. UQ put their business interests above my safety.
When, despite these dirty tactics, I was elected by a majority of students to the UQ Senate on a platform opposing the Confucius Institute, the Vice-Chancellor urgently pushed through a new four-year Confucius Institute agreement before I could be seated.
Out of frustration with UQ's bullying tactics and their utter hostility to dialogue or discussion, I took to mocking the UQ Confucius Institute online. I posted a satirical Facebook event: ''UQ Confucius Institute Panel - Why Uyghurs Must Be Exterminated.''
The satirical nature of this event was clear to any reasonable observer. It was a satirical jab, pointing out the fact that the UQ Confucius Institute is fundamentally an arm of the same state pursuing genocide against Uyghur Muslims.
By this point, I was well-accustomed to UQ's thuggish behaviour towards student critics of its links to the CCP. But what they did next was still shocking - UQ engaged a top-drawer law firm, Clayton Utz, to intimidate and threaten me with a lawsuit.
Clayton Utz sent me the attached letter, written by a top partner at the firm. Employing a deliberately malicious and ridiculously uncharitable reading of the satirical event, it makes absurd representations and threatened legal action against me as a student. 
Their ruthless behaviour towards me as a student was astonishing. Unless I immediately deleted the satirical post, the letter noted that UQ "reserved the right to commence proceedings ... to seek costs, including indemnity costs".
I'm a twenty year old student. Given that I have donated my entire salary as a UQ Senator to Amnesty International's Uyghur human rights work, I have no money - I work part time as a high school tutor to support myself through my studies and live at home.
UQ is a multi-billion dollar institution with almost bottomless financial and legal resources. I'm an undergraduate student with nothing. This was bullying and intimidation, plain and simple - an attempt to exploit the power imbalance between institution and individual.
Fearful of being ruined by such legal harrassment, I deleted the satirical post at Clayton Utz's direction almost immediately. But UQ wasn't done. They had to have a double dip. Now, this affair is included in a 186-page dossier outlining the case for my expulsion.
Ultimately, I would argue UQ's behaviour towards me constitutes a remarkable case of institutional harrassment and bullying, one that may now end in my expulsion. There is a pattern of hostility here that can be traced all the way back to my first campus protest against the CCP.
This pattern of petty, vindictive harrassment is suggestive of just how hostile UQ is to criticism of its close ties to the CCP, ties worth $150 million a year in student fees. UQ is willing to do almost anything to secure the silence of student critics who threaten these ties.
