Drew Pavlou describes himself as a human rights activist, larrikin and adventurer from Australia. Many would also consider him a young troublemaker. But his campaign to draw attention at Wimbledon this week to the disappearance of Chinese former tennis player Peng Shuai is a timely reminder that we move on too fast.
And he deserves credit for that.
Where is Peng Shuai? Why hasn’t the former doubles champion been mentioned by anyone, as they devour Pimm’s, strawberries and cream on the Wimbledon green?
Is she safe? What does this say about our commitment to young women speaking out about sexual abuse, the first public Me Too accusation against a senior Chinese Communist Party official? Or how we see a country that seems hell-bent on hiding it?
In November 2021, Peng Shuai accused China’s former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. She posted an essay detailing the allegation on a Chinese social media platform. The accusation disappeared in minutes, was quickly removed from search engines, and Peng herself went missing soon after.
Since then, we’ve had subterfuge, photos and videos that carry no verification of her safety, and performances that human rights authorities can only describe as “staged”. Peng reemerged months later to retract her accusation — after contact with Chinese authorities. This attempt to recant has been dismissed by experts across the board.
And yet under balmy blue skies, with the Royals in attendance, the Wimbledon show rolled on.
Drew Pavlou — and I’ll declare I know him, although not well — did what the rest of us should be doing: he demanded an answer.
Pavlou was evicted from the men’s final for protesting against Peng Shuai’s treatment. But just consider how his protest was handled. He was tackled to the ground and dragged out of the stands by security. “Just got thrown down the stairs by Wimbledon security for holding up a sign saying #WhereIsPengShuai,” he told his social media followers. “One of them smashed my head into the wall.”
Pavlou says he tried to make his complaint between games, and silently held the poster up, but once he was crash-tackled, he shouted his demand so people could hear her name and so it would be broadcast.
Good on him. Tell me how that behaviour is worse than those chaining themselves to roads, tunnels and cars in our capital cities, preventing front-line workers and parents from making appointments. Or why the drunk woman who repeatedly heckled during the men’s final wasn’t dealt with in the same way.
We should all feel ashamed that Pavlou, a 23-year-old from Brisbane who ran for the Senate as an anti-communist independent candidate, led this charge, not us.
Why won’t Wimbledon acknowledge Peng’s existence? Why are we content for her disappearance to simply be a story back in November 2021, one that carries no lessons for us today — about China or Me Too accusations against senior officials of that country?
“The Chinese government tried to wipe Peng Shuai from the face of the Earth because she came out and accused a top CCP official of sexual assault,” Pavlou said yesterday.
“And the saddest thing is that they have almost been successful in making everyone forget about her. I just don’t want people to forget.”
This serves as an example of how we just don’t listen enough to our Gen Zs, or the messages they want broadcasted. But it also shows how quickly we are happy to move on from a cause — and perhaps what we think of the accusations of one young woman and the mighty power that has tried to bury them.
