Jonathan Porter
CHINA has expelled a member of the Sydney Dance Company for allegedly carrying banned books into the communist state.
Xue-Jun Wang, one of the company’s longest-serving dancers, was winding up rehearsals in a Shanghai studio on Wednesday when six immigration officials and city police officers in plain clothes arrived to take him away.
A hero emerged in the guise of Graeme Murphy, the SDC’s artistic director and 29-year company stalwart, who stepped in, saying: “He is not going anywhere without me.” Wang said last night: “Graeme was a real hero to protect me.”
Australian consular staff and Murphy accompanied the 43-year-old dancer back to his hotel room, where the officials told him to pack his bags. He was then placed on a China Eastern flight, arriving in Sydney yesterday morning.
While Wang admitted he had been a Falun Gong practitioner for 10 years, he denied he had been carrying books by Falun Gong, a religion banned in China, and said he had been expelled for “chatting to the wrong person”.
“I was carrying a Chinese translation of Nine Commentaries, which is by the newspaper The Epoch Times,” he said.
“Last week, I had a chat with a Shanghainese man about the Communist Party and showed him a copy of the book. I think I showed it to the wrong person.”
The Epoch Times, which publishes several editions throughout the world, is a strident critic of communist China and has been linked to Falun Gong.
Wang said he did not think the man was a Chinese agent but that he had probably informed on him. “It was a silly thing to do, to deport me, but the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) does many silly things,” he said.
Wang, who migrated to Australia more than a decade ago, is married to an Australian and holds an Australian passport.
He had been in China for four weeks and was rehearsing for a contemporary dance adaptation of the ancient warrior legend Mulan. The work will open the Shanghai Festival in 10 days’ time, with 57 dancers from the Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble and 15 from the SDC.
An SDC spokeswoman said the show would go on. “The company is very upset,” she said. “We support Xue’s right to privacy and his right to have his own beliefs.”
The deportation of a leading member of the nation’s premier dance organisation is the biggest diplomatic upset between Australia and China since the defection of Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin and his family in June.
The renegade official had claimed Chinese spies were active in Australia.
Last night, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman said the department was “aware of the incident” regarding Wang. “We are aware that a 43-year-old Australian man from NSW was briefly detained by Chinese officials in Shanghai on October 5,” she said.
“The man was alleged to have Falun Gong material in his possession and was asked to depart China on October 5. The Australian consulate-general in Shanghai provided the man with assistance.”
A spokesman for Falun Gong in Australia, John Deller, said the deportation was “an outrage”. “He is a Falun Gong practitioner and it’s outrageous for him to be ejected from China for merely sharing a publication which exposes the bloody history of the Communist Party,” he said. “The Nine Commentaries is being discovered by the Chinese people and the CCP is worried because the reality of their brutal rule is being exposed.”
Posting date: 7/Oct/2005
Original article date: 7/Oct/2005
Category: Media Report
