Mao Concert: Hatred and Division

August 30, 2016

On behalf of the Embracing Australian Values Alliance (EAVA), we would like to express our grave concern and anger about a concert to be held in both the Sydney and Melbourne Town Hall that celebrates and praises Mao Zedong. The Sydney concert will be held on 6 September and the Melbourne concert on 9 September.

This concert will deeply hurt many Australians of Chinese background as to them; Mao is like Adolf Hitler to the Jewish people or Pol Pot to the Cambodian people.  Mao concert has triggered the trauma of many whose family members, relatives or friends were victims of the various notorious social revolutions, including the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Many Australian Chinese came to Australia as immigrants or refugees in order to escape from a regime that imposed brutal suppression of its citizens; the in-coming of the Mao’s concert is like a ghost haunting them and would not let them off the ordeal.

We have grave concern that the Mao concert is allowed to be held in the landmark local government premises. We think it is most insensitive to the feeling of many Australian Chinese and hurt them strongly, as celebrating Mao publicly is against the Australian fundamental values of democracy, human rights and harmony.

It is also damaging Australia’s reputation as news of this concert and the community objections have already been spread around the world, that Australia has become an easy target of the China’s soft power foreign policies and that we Australians have twisted our own high standards to accommodate the Chinese top fearful tyranny in contemporary history.  What would it look like if Australia allows a concert to celebrate Adolf Hitler?

Currently we have collected more than 2700 signatures in Sydney that raised a concern and demanded an immediate termination of hosting the fascist concert at our Town Hall in both Sydney and Melbourne.

We understand, at present, the Mao concert is presented by some pro-China Chinese businessmen in the form of fascist aesthetics; it has the power of infiltrating Australian community by gradually ignoring the on-going human right abuses and authoritarian rule of the Communist party in China, or accepting these as normal.

As Australian Chinese, we see this trend is happening as the Chinese language media in Australia is largely controlled by the Chinese Consulates with all sorts of commercial linkages; pro-China groups emerged in the Chinese communities in Sydney and Melbourne; the incoming of the Confucius Institutes in our universities and have spread to high and junior schools in the name of teaching Chinese, yet funding are sourced from Hanban, which is an official Chinese government body based in Beijing.

We have concern that Mao concert is part of the Chinese strategies to gradually desensitize the Australian public as well as our Federal, State and local politicians.

We have scheduled a rally at 6pm on 6th September outside the Town Hall to Say NO to this concert that undermines Australian Values and our democracy.  Please join us on the night and SAY NO together!

John Hugh

On Behalf of the Embracing Australian Values Alliance

Email: jhugh@tpg.com.au