Literally – Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton’s website, FreeSpeech.org.nz is banned in China. Surprisingly, so is Pacific Empire. Bernard’s blog Section 14 has been very critical of China, but China is not often mentioned on this little blog.
Test your own URL at the Great Firewall of China website – the results might shock you. It brings home the reality of censorship in a very personal way.

This reminds me of how the kow-towing of the New Zealand Government – and the Wellington City Council – essentially amounts to the import of repressive practices from a foreign dictatorship. New Zealanders should not accept it. I live very close to the Chinese Embassy, and so I always see Falun Gong members meditating in silent protest at their persecution. I admire their persistence and determination – they stay out there for hours, even in pouring rain! But the Green Party’s Frogblog reports that Chinese dissident religious group Falun Gong was excluded from the Cuba St. Carnival, allegedly at the request of the Chinese government:
Wellington City Council have kicked Falun Gong out of the Cuba Street parade, after previously allowing them in. 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 Greens and the Libertarianz were both denied space at the parade – I guess the WCC wanted to make it non-political. But Falun Gong is not primarily a political group. From Section 14:
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.
The NZ government has also been unduly restrictive with Free Tibet protestors – stopping them from protesting at Parliament, and at the APEC meeting in Auckland, chartering buses to block the protestors so Jiang Zemin wouldn’t notice them, etc. This was circumvented at Parliament by the late Green MP Rod Donald, with a one-man protest – leading to massive agitation among the Chinese entourage, and an attempt to shield him with two very large security guards! Absolutely disgraceful. OK, now they really have a reason to ban my blog!


Falun Gong’s vivisection allegation has been discredited by multiple undercover investigations.
US government and Chinese dissident investigations:
1) http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=April&x=20060416141157uhyggep0.5443231&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL33437.pdf (section CRS-7)
2) http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060806_1.htm
http://www.cicus.org/news/newsdetail.php?id=6492
3) http://crc.gov.my/clinicalTrial/documents/Proposal/TCM_Stroke%20TrialProtocol%20synopsis.pdf (page 3)
As you can see, the hospital Falun Gong accused is partly owned by a Malaysian health care company and is subject to oversight beyond Chinese authority.
Left by charles liu on February 28th, 2007