Slander in bitter election campaign
Chinese-language social media was flooded with fake news and slanderous rumours about New Zealand politicians that tainted the election results, a legal case reveals.
Labour MP Raymond Huo ended defamation proceedings against People’s Party President Steven Ching and his wife Ailian Siu on Tuesday, after he was subjected to wild accusations circulated anonymously through Chinese social media site WeChat.
Ching was previously a highlyranked Labour candidate, until the media discovered fisheries convictions that he had failed to disclose. He and Siu have signed statements admitting they published the comments and caused harm to Huo. They agreed to pay an undisclosed sum in compensation.
Huo says the ordeal is proof misinformation tactics and fearmongering rhetoric, common in China during the Cultural Revolution, are now entering politics.
The WeChat posts included contradictory defamatory allegations that Huo harboured a hidden relationship with China, visited the Dalai Lama, had been behind news stories exposing National MP Jian Yang’s background as a lecturer at a Chinese spy academy, had serious criminal convictions and was the perpetrator of domestic violence.
It then escalated with a second anonymous post that accused Huo and Auckland Mayor Phil Goff of walking into a police station and handing over cash to wipe the MP’s non-existent criminal record.
Former Labour Party President Mike Williams said Huo had done the right thing by challenging the defamatory statements in court.
Voters of Chinese ethnicity had a high turnout rate at the polls and both major parties raised hundreds of thousands of dollars at dinners with the community, Williams said.
‘‘There is a kind of seething social media whirlpool going on there that people like you and I are simply not conscious of because we don’t speak the language.
‘‘You cannot make up things about people in New Zealand and publish them and that’s what these people don’t realise.’’
Ching and Siu’s lawyer, Martin Hislop, said he had advised his clients not to comment. New Zealand