FILE - In this Dec 1, 2020, file photo, students walk around the University of New South Wales campus in Sydney, Australia. China's government and its supporters have harassed, intimidated and conducted surveillance on pro-democracy Chinese students living in Australia, and Australian universities have failed to protect the students' academic freedoms, Human Rights Watch said in a report published Wednesday, June 30, 2021.
“It was really heartbreaking how alone these students were and how vulnerable they are so far from home and feeling this lack of protection from the university,” said Sophie McNeill, Australia researcher for Human Rights Watch and the report’s author. “Universities really fear a backlash from Beijing, so rather than discuss these issues openly, they are swept under the carpet. But we think they no longer can be.
The issue is financially and diplomatically sensitive for Australian universities, which have been encouraged by the government to build partnerships with China and have made billions of dollars in the process. The issue of foreign interference is especially thorny for Beijing. In 2018, Australia introduced laws widely seen as a means of preventing covert Chinese interference in Australian politics, universities and other institutions. The laws enraged China and stoked increasing tensions between the nations.
Jackson denied universities had turned a blind eye to Chinese interference and said they were actively trying to combat the problem by working alongside security agencies as part of the government’s University Foreign Interference Taskforce that was formed in 2019.
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