‘Not my president’: Anti-Xi posters in foreign varsities
Posters against Chinese President Xi Jinping have surfaced in several foreign varsities, including in the US, UK and Australia, according to media reports.
China’s rubber-stamp Parliament on Sunday ratified a contentious constitutional amendment to abolish the two-term presidential limit, allowing Xi to rule indefinitely.
The posters, written in Mandarin and English, have featured phrases such as “not my president” and “I disagree”.
They began appearing on some US university campuses last week, and were later reported in countries, including the UK, France, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada, BBC reported.
Twitter account @StopXiJinping has been posting links from where the posters can be downloaded, and has been encouraging others to join what it calls “our campaign”.
“We spoke up as we genuinely believe that Chinese citizens, overseas or at home, have the right to express opinions free from fear,” the account tweeted on Friday.
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“We were even more furious that the government thinks it’s okay to hush the people up, while promoting this propaganda that Xi’s staying in power was ‘Chinese peoples’ wish’,” the campaign organisers were quoted as saying by SBS News.
Wu Lebao, a student at Australian National University, said he had put up the posters to raise awareness among his peers. “By posting those bills, I want to impress on them that there is a significant change occurring in China,” Wu said.
“So we started this campaign as a response to that: there are still social media that you can’t censor, and it’s definitely not our wish that an unelected authoritarian become a de facto lifetime dictator.”
David Brophy, a lecturer in Chinese history at University of Sydney, said he was surprised by such a public display of dissent from the students. “For anyone who plans to go back to China in the future, they do incur a risk by being visible as politically active,” he said. AGENCIES