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Student Activist in Australia Is Suspended After China Protests

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Drew Pavlou, an advocate for Hong Kong democracy and against Chinese influence on campus, has been barred from his studies at the University of Queensland until 2022.
A student activist has been suspended from one of Australia’s leading universities after calling for democracy in Hong Kong and repeatedly criticizing Chinese influence on campus.
The student, Drew Pavlou, 20, a philosophy major at the University of Queensland, has been barred until 2022, through the end of his term as a student member of the university senate. He had been six months from graduating.
“It’s a calculated move to silence me,” said Mr. Pavlou, who describes himself as a human rights advocate. “It’s because the University of Queensland wants to do everything possible to avoid offending its Chinese allies.”
University officials did not offer a reason for the suspension, which was announced Friday night by a disciplinary panel, but the move followed 11 allegations of misconduct that focused mainly on Mr. Pavlou’s unorthodox tactics and combative comments on social media.
Even at a time when relations between Australia and China are tense, with Beijing imposing tariffs on barley and cutting beef imports in the wake of the Australian government’s push for a coronavirus inquiry, Mr. Pavlou has grabbed headlines by goading university officials into making him an enemy rather than just a provocateur.
In Australia, a country that does not explicitly protect freedom of expression in the Constitution, his methods are those of a free-speech insurgent.
In one case, according to documents from the proceedings, he was accused of writing messages on note cards in the campus bookstore with a black marker that he had not purchased, returning the pen to the shelf after being asked to buy it.
In another instance, in March, he appeared outside the university’s Confucius Institute — cultural outposts of the Chinese government that are on many campuses worldwide — wearing a biosafety suit.

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