This series (Part 1 on Hu Jintao, Part 2 on the Bush administration and Part 3 on Tony Blair) would not be complete if "Steve" Harper is not included. Writing about Mr. Harper presents a unique difficulty for me, thought, because there were too many nuts-cracking by him over the years and for a long time, since he was on my side of the issue, I did not take notes.
Of course, his stand on my cause turned out to be unprincipled as reflected in his changing attitude before and after the last election. Indeed, not only is he a political opportunist, he is also a mean one. I will document how his government treated me even worse than the previous Liberal one if I find more time and energy.
For now, let me cast my memory to the more distant past and recall events that show Mr. Harper did know my file and indeed, he pretty much rode on my file to power.
The first time Mr. Harper drew my attention was during the final days of general election 2004. He defended his party's position that the then prime minister Paul Martin supported child pornography. The allegation was so outrageous that it had to draw my attention. In retrospect, I guess drawing my attention was exactly his purpose in making this campaign "gaffe". It was a desperate cry for help from me as his party was falling behind the Liberals in the polls. Indeed, partly because of this remark of his and partly because of Paul Martin's words and actions before and during the campaign, I sensed that my file was more significant – I did not realize the connection to Cecilia Zhang murder at the time - than I originally thought. That's why I concluded right after the election that the election had probably been stolen by the Martin Liberals.
Between the two elections, there were a lot of nuts-cracking by Mr. Harper and his caucus members. Especially during the final weeks of the spring 2005 session of the Parliament, the Conservatives sent out so many hints to me through the media that some journalists used the word telegraph in their veiled attacks on them. Unfortunately, I can only recall two incidents involving Mr. Harper himself:
Days after I wrote my blog titled Untitled, Mr. Harper said during Question Period in the Parliament on February 8, 2005: "Mr. Speaker, I am tempted to call the Prime Minister the artless dodger." Before that, Mr. Martin was only known as a dodger, I guess.
Day(s) after I posted my blog, This entry is written with dignity, Mr. Harper gave me advice by making comments publicly that when fighting an opponent as nasty or cruel as the Liberals, one should be careful not to lose oneself.
When it came to the last general election, I am able to remember more of Mr. Harper's speeches that demonstrated his knowledge of my file. As I said before, my file was at the center of last election campaign for all parties involved, not just for the Conservatives.
Right after the Parliament was dissolved and the election formally began, Mr. Harper made his election statement in front of the House of Commons. Using the phrase "people's verdict ", he made reference to my unfinished Chinese article, Liberal hypocrisy in immigration policies, published just one week before.
While ordinary Canadians have worked hard, paid their taxes, and played by the rules, the Liberals have been preoccupied by damage control, lurching from one scandal to another, recklessly promising to spend money and desperately trying to avoid the people's verdict.
This speech of Mr. Harper's set the tone for the Conservative campaign. Some pundits called it Tory's Time Horton approach. Since nobody is willing to talk to me, I don't know how much, if any, impact my letter of early fall 2005 had on the Conservatives in forming their strategy: "I think the Conservative has a great opportunity at hand. I would like to work with you for a better Canada, a Canada that is truly for the people, rather than for the elite."
My article, Liberal hypocrisy in immigration policies, which Mr. Harper made reference to in his speech, was written just a week before the election call because I knew that my cause of fighting for justice for Cecilia Zhang would be especially well received in the immigrant communities. I guess everyone else could see that, too. As it turned out, however, attracting immigrant votes, rather than acting on principle, was the real reason that Mr. Harper wanted to be on my side of the issue. On January 5, 2006, in a speech designed to woo immigrant votes in Toronto, Mr. Harper said: "I see a city whose fundamental character is beginning to change", in an apparent reference to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's action-plan-for-Canadian-election article published on Washington Post in early December 2005. He was essentially signaling to me to ignore Rice's article and join in his campaign.
In another speech aimed at wooing immigrant votes and calling me to join the campaign fray, Mr. Harper emphasized that immigrants were honest people. I immediately understood that Mr. Harper was trying to defend me as I had exaggerated my credentials when I first came to Canada in 1991 as a graduate student at Simon Fraser University and it looked like Martin Liberals and media people would make this stain in my personal history an issue. I mentioned in my Canadian Election 2006 series Paul Martin's speech at the UN conference where he used the word "reticent" and implied that he knew my file at SFU. A strange editorial on Toronto Star in the middle of the campaign on December 31 also conveyed, on behalf of all mainstream media, similar warning to me. Indeed, being a "jobless immigrant without privacy", I had expected, ever since I decided that going public with my story was my only option, that this stain of mine would probably become an opening for personal attack someday, as reflected in the word "overstatement" in the very first open letters I wrote to Canadian government in December 2003.
Unlike other honest or dumb mistakes I made in my life, this one is indefensible. And I don't feel good writing about it. It was symptomatic of the time in China when the prospect of a life-changing opportunity seemed to justify a little short-cut. I hope Chinese people will draw a lesson from me and above all, try to slow down as, I believe, the future of China is bright. Likewise, by openly admitting this personal mistake, which had nothing to do with the racially motivated Cecilia Zhang murder, I hope people with knowledge and conscience will stand up and speak the truth, not just for Cecilia, but also for a better Canada.
For my part during the election, it was through watching Mr. Harper's campaign that I realized my "role" as a candidate for the 5th generation of Chinese leadership. At first, all those 5% blue signs accompanying Mr. Harper's announcements of his party's target of the GST cut caught my eye. Then, on the first day of the second half of the campaign, Mr. Harper revealed Conservative's 5 priorities in the biggest announcement of his party's campaign platform up to that point in time. In retrospect, it was apparent that Mr. Harper wanted very much for me to join in his campaign. And he certainly did not mind the perception that I was a candidate for the next generation of Chinese leadership.
Another connection between my writing and Conservative campaign strategy was their very effective "one policy announcement one day" approach in the early goings of the election. Back in September 2005, I had written another Chinese article, Media bias in covering Pacific Gateway, also with the coming election in mind. In the article, I praised Mr. Harper and the Conservatives for their policy ideas, using his speech earlier that month on expanding trade with China and India as an illustration.
I should point out that, at the time when I wrote my article, I just thought Mr. Harper's idea excellent. In retrospect, I think that, by emphasizing in his speech "in exploiting the growing demand of China, India and others for our natural resource sectors" and later, by proclaiming that he was not guided by "blind ideology" in his rebuttal to a National Post editorial on his speech, Mr. Harper was sending me an overtone. Obviously, I am extremely dismayed by Mr. Harper's reckless China-bashing lately. It is apparent that Mr. Harper thought this was a good way to dispose of my file because (1) it set up the stage for an eventual diplomatic showdown with China where my cause of fighting for justice for Cecilia Zhang would be lost, and (2) Canada should not be afraid of such a showdown because, as he justified publicly, China needed our natural resources. This is a risky and irresponsible game Mr. Harper is playing based on flawed reasoning.
The Bush administration knew that I had exaggerated my credentials, too. As I mentioned before, March 2006 was a low time for the Bush administration in the development of my story. Near the end of that month, they or people close to them even sent me a serious personal overtone, which I disclosed for a very brief period of time last August and did not anticipate to do so again except under extraordinary circumstances. Hearing no response from me, Mr. Bush went on the offense. On April 10, he gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University, one of the universities I applied with the same exaggerated credentials while in China and had been warned about over the years.
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Obviously.
Having tried to document the ill treatments I endured under the Harper government, I changed my mind. For one thing, it’s too tedious to write my day to day (boring) life. For another, I believe public policy is more important than personal treatment. So, I will focus on Mr. Harper’s public policy vis-à-vis my file instead.
Instead, I’ll give two examples where the public does not know the whole story.
On June 22, 2006, i.e., the last day of the spring session of the parliament, a Conservative motion was put forward to grant The Dalai Lama an honorary Canadian citizenship. As I noted before, the Harper government dealt two other issues that were connected to my file on that day, i.e., the Chinese head tax redress and the new Age of Consent bill. It was obvious that The Dalai Lama honorary citizenship issue was also related to my file. Indeed, The Dalai Lama himself knew it. In an interview with the Financial Times on June 1, 2006, The Dalai Lama said that China had a “psychological problem” in dealing with “superpower America”, an apparent bullying attack on my mental health, similar to those mounted by the RCMP, pundits, and former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, etc. (I respect The Dalai Lama as a religious leader, but I certainly don’t appreciate being bullied, especially when I am fighting, against all odds, for justice for an innocent girl.) Another example illustrating that the honorary citizenship emboldened him to attack China would be his comments on the newly-constructed Tibet railway. Also on June 1, The Dalai Lama said: “The rail link in itself is positive, a sign of development.” However, during his trip to Vancouver to accept the honorary citizenship just three months later, when asked to comment on the same subject by a reporter, he became extremely harsh of the railway, using such inflammable language as “cultural genocide”. (By the way, I don’t think it was a mere coincident, either, that The Dalai Lama was given an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University, where the seed of hatred was nurtured in Cecilia Zhang abduction and murder. I do remember, though, the then prime minister Paul Minister gave convoluted reasons for meeting The Dalai Lama in 2004.)
Another example was that, on July 18, 2006, during a visit to Vimy Ridge, France, Harper mused aloud: “These were sandbags, not concrete, and the enemy had guns, not cameras.” Those reporters who were not familiar with my story, such as Mike Blanchfield of CanWest, had no clue what Mr. Harper meant by that remark. But I immediately realized his meaning. In fact, I was so alarmed by it that I blogged about it right away. Yes, I agree with Mr. Harper that what President Hu Jintao did, i.e., went to Washington rather than raised my cause with his government, was selfish (and he might have considered Hu’s action an affront, too). But then for Mr. Harper to conclude that Chinese people are all selfish, and not united as one, is absurd. What’s worse, he was calling for arms because, apparently, what the previous Liberal government did to me with cameras was not enough for him.
I should note that Mr. Harper’s comments came just three days before the mysterious death of Dr. Jiang Guobing in Toronto. I should also note that on July 28, I was almost hit by a speeding SUV in the back alley of my residence, a rare chance for whoever was monitoring me as I had to stay in bed most of the time that week. – I felt at the time that somebody was trying to stop me from publicizing the case of Dr. Jiang as, obviously, I did a lot of research online about this case during that period of time.
As I said, “Steve” Harper is not just a political opportunist, he is a mean one.
