The Kaohsiung City Government yesterday said it would review a Kaohsiung Film Archive plan to screen a documentary about World Uyghur Congress president Rebiya Kadeer at an upcoming film festival after representatives of the tourism industry said it could be keeping Chinese tourists away.
City Government Secretary-General Hau Chien-sheng (郝建生) told reporters the city’s Information Office would review the plan, adding that the city government had not been informed of the inclusion of the documentary before the festival organizers unveiled the list of films for the Oct. 16 to Oct. 29 event.
The city government was responding to calls from representatives of the tourism industry.
“[The visit by] the Dalai Lama dealt a blow to [tourism in the city],” Kaohsiung Tourism Association chairman Tseng Fu-hsing (曾福興) told reporters yesterday.
The Dalai Lama was invited by local government heads in the south, including Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), to comfort victims of Typhoon Morakot, which wreaked havoc in southern Taiwan last month.
“I hereby urge the city government to cancel the plan to screen the documentary, as it is too sensitive and could harm cross-strait relations,” Tseng said.
A Kaohsiung hotelier said travel agencies arranging trips for Chinese tour groups were avoiding Kaohsiung City and canceling restaurant stops booked for the groups.
Kaohsiung City Tourism Bureau Director-General Lin Kun-shan (林崑山) confirmed that hotels including the Han-Hsien International Hotel and the Lees Hotel had informed the city government of cancellations by Chinese tour groups.
Liu Shiu-ying (劉秀英), director of the archive and one of the festival organizers, said on Sept. 5 that the documentary, titled The 10 Conditions of Love, had been chosen because it fits one of the themes for this year: “people power.”
Beijing claims US-based Kadeer is a terrorist and has accused her of inciting unrest in the Xinjiang earlier this summer.
In protest at the festival’s refusal of a request from the Chinese Consulate in Australia not to air the documentary at the film festival, China withdrew its four films from the event late last month.
Huang Hao-chieh (黃皓傑), one of the organizers of the festival, said the festival’s official Web site had been hacked early this month and a message left on the site instructing the organizers to drop the documentary.
Huang said it would be an insult to Taiwan’s freedom of speech if the archive canceled the screening, adding that the organizers hoped to bring a variety of perspectives to the festival.
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