The Editor,
“Brochure slams Coquitlam school district China-backed Confucius Institute,” (Tri-City News, Nov. 27)
I admittedly know little of the Confucius Institute except that they offer Mandarin Language classes and cultural programs. To believe their primary purpose is to crudely spread CPP propaganda, seems at best, naive.
Yet very recently we received in our mail a booklet entitled: ‘Confucius Institutes Have no Place in BC.’ In over 16 glossy pages, the booklet rails against the Communist Party of China and specifically appeals to parents of School District No. 43, Coquitlam, to write local officials demanding that the Confucius Institute be “kicked out of BC.” On the back pages are the addresses of School District 43 school board trustees.
No where in this mail-out is any identification of its origin or its sender. Only at the top of a photo of an anti- Chinese government protest in Toronto is, in small print, the attribution: Zhou Xijng, Epoch Times
Several months ago, we received a unsolicited copy of the Epoch Times in our mail box. The entire issue was devoted to a claim that the Chinese government had deliberately engineered and transmitted COVID-19. When I checked the on-line news web site of Epoch Times, I discovered that it purveys right wing conspiracy theories as vile as any to attributed to the shadowy QAnon.
Canada Post would never, thankfully, permit mail-outs from QAnon. Why are they abetting the spread of the vile propaganda of the Epoch Times?
Fraser Thorburn, Port Coquitlam
