Chinese-owned social media company TikTok has temporarily blocked Australian human rights activist and Senate candidate Drew Pavlou from posting on the platform on the same day he discussed his anti-Chinese Communist Party activism on a popular podcast.
“It’s very peculiar. I haven’t posted [on TikTok] in weeks so I think I’ve been banned because my campaign for Parliament on an anti-CCP platform has begun to get noticed after Sixty Minutes,” Pavlou told The Epoch Times on Nov. 13.
“Today I spoke to ADV China on their big podcast which regularly exposes CCP corruption and suddenly the ban was in place.”
Pavlou appeared on a live-streamed episode of ADV Podcasts where he described how he “fell into” standing up for human rights in mainland China when he organised a protest on the University of Queensland campus in 2019, where he was a student.
“I organised one protest to support Hong Kong and the Uyghurs, and I was assaulted on campus by a Chinese nationalist, and hundreds of Chinese nationalists, sort of descended upon us,” he told ADV Podcast on Nov. 13.
Pavlou described how he organised 10 of his friends “on a whim” to protest against the university’s ties to the Chinese regime. But they soon found themselves surrounded by hundreds of pro-CCP Chinese nationalists.
At the time, a Chinese man ripped the megaphone out of his hands and smashed it to the ground. Simultaneously, another Chinese person played the CCP anthem from a speaker. Pavlou described the incident as “coordinated.”
Pavlou and some of the protesters were physically attacked, with someone dousing them in a “yellow liquid” that “smelled like phlegm,” he told ADV Podcasts.
“After that happened the Chinese consul general in Brisbane, who was also made a professor at my university—they have very close ties with the Chinese government—he endorsed the violence, saying it was ‘patriotic,’” Pavlou said.
Pavlou said his family received death threats by pro-CCP Chinese nationalists, and he endured a six-month estrangement from his family, who he said were scared.
The 22-year-old Brisbane man said he “never set out to be an activist related to China whatsoever,” and has lost friendships because of it.
But two years later, Pavlou has formed a political party, the Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance, and is running on an anti-CCP platform.
“We want to sanction CCP leaders so they can’t store their corrupt wealth in Australia,” he told The Epoch Times.
“We want to take their bank accounts, end the Australia China Free Trade Agreement, nationalize Darwin port, and urgently reverse all national asset sales to China that endanger our sovereignty as a nation.”
Pavlou said his party will provide a humanitarian program for Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and any Chinese people who are fleeing persecution by the CCP.
“We will commit to defending Taiwan from aggression and we will recognise Tibet, Hong Kong, and East Turkistan as occupied and under illegitimate rule,” he said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
