Chinese tourists in London order local to stop live-streaming his piano performance
Published date: Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:43:40 +0700
This is the astonishing moment flag-waving Chinese tourists tried to stop a pianist from live-streaming his performance in London.
Brendan Kavanagh was using the public piano at the St Pancras International train station when the leader of the group approached him to complain that they were visible in his video.
Instead of simply moving to another position, the man and a woman, who claimed to be working for Chinese TV, argued with Brendan and demanded he stop filming his performance.
Defiant Brendan said ‘we are in Great Britain, we are not in China' and continued recording them.
At one point, the Far Eastern man - who is also believed to work for the Chinese state - flew into a rage when life-long Londoner Brendan touched one of the group's Communist flags. Chinese viewers suggested the the handler was furious that Brendan had insulted the Communist Party by touching the flag.
Police eventually arrived and calmed the situation by moving the Chinese group to a different position.
Brendan addressed his viewers as the officers took the tourists aside.
He said: 'The Chinese communist party told us not to film here.'
In an example of the Streisand effect, the video with the faces of the Chinese complainants clearly visible has now been seen by tens of millions more people than it would have it they had ignored the performance.
Brendan said that ‘the Chinese Communist Party are trying to get [the footage] taken down from YouTube'.
There is growing awareness both within China and in the West of the country's brutal treatment of citizens - including organ harvesting and mass imprisonments.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) stated that China's treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang had lead to the 'United States and several other foreign governments' branding China's actions in Xinjiang as 'genocide'.
The United Nations human rights office warned that the actions could 'constitute crimes against humanity'.
The full video can be seen here: https://youtu.be/65iwnI2hjAA