Failing a positive self-defense, it would have been better for the Hong Kong–based airline to remain silent in response to a troublemaking passenger than to apologize and engage in censorship.
The animated series “Family Guy” is one of the entertainments that the airline makes available during flights. In one episode, a brief scene shows the Family Guy standing next to Tank Man as he blocks a row of tanks, a depiction of the confrontation that took place after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
A passenger who saw the episode then bitched about the reference on social media. Didn’t this kind of thing violate Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law, under which freedoms like the freedom to talk about the past are being extinguished? Very concerning.
An airline spokesman says: “We emphasize that the program’s content does not represent Cathay Pacific’s standpoint and have immediately arranged to have the program removed as soon as possible.”
What standpoint would that be? That it’s okay for a cartoon to mention history that the CCP would like people to forget?
The airline must have felt it had little choice. Even if nobody there would have detained as a result of neglecting to publicly apologize for the heinous inadvertent inflight access to a reference to Tiananmen Square, skipping the apology and the remedy might have painted a target on its back. The Chinese Communist Party might have made a note.
Cathay Pacific is determined to do better. It has “ordered its third-party provider to thoroughly investigate and strengthen oversight.”
Imported shows have been censored before in Hong Kong, including “The Simpsons,” an episode of which also alludes to what happened in Tiananmen Square.
