Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was forced to evacuate his home after threats were sent to a Chinese classical dance group.
The email threat read, “Large quantities of nitroglycerin explosives have been placed around the Prime Minister’s lodge. If you proceed with the performance, the lodge will be blown into ruins.”
Federal police searched the site and confirmed it was a hoax but evacuated the Prime Minister as a precaution.
“This is unacceptable,” Australian Opposition Leader Augus Taylor said. “I want to make sure that we have a united front.”
“I’m very pleased to hear that the Prime Minister is safe and well and that the threat came to naught,” said Jane Hume, Deputy Liberal Leader of Australia.
New York-based performing arts company Shen Yun, a world renowned Chinese classical dance group, has become a main target of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Shen Yun performs to millions of people worldwide every year in more than 200 cities including the U.S. and the U.K.
Its performances in Australia have not been impacted and are going on as planned with its world tour.
“We shouldn’t allow such hate crime and foreign interference continue in Australia by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Lucy Zhao from Falun Dada Association of Australia.
Ongoing Threats Against Shen Yun by the CCP
Other world leaders have also been threatened as the CCP intensifies its transnational repression against Shen Yun in recent years.
Shen Yun Performing Arts was founded in New York by a group of Chinese practitioners of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, persecuted by the CCP since 1999.
Rooted in the Buddhist tradition based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, Falun Gong which started in China in 1992 has millions of practitioners worldwide today.
The company has received repeated bomb and death threats.
Last December, Shen Yun received an email targeting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“Cancel the Shen Yun performance, or British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will be shot from a distance!”
Threats started piling up against U.S. President Donald Trump and the U.S. politicians last year .
Leeshai Lemish, emcee of Shen Yun, read a note of a threat that said, “February 11th, 2025—politicians and congressmen from all countries who support Falun Gong will become targets of attack. And even shooting Trump and driving a vehicle loaded with explosives into the White House are not ruled out.”
Tyres of Shen Yun’s tour buses have been slashed in efforts to cause carnage.
“And it’s cut in such a way that the tire would not deflate immediately but would explode at high speeds on a highway in China,” Lemish explained.
Some family members of the performers are repeatedly harassed.
“My first MC partner was from Beijing, and the National Security Bureau would visit her family in Beijing every single weekend, telling them, we know what your daughter is doing, get her to stop it,” he said.
Lemish added, “We had an erhu player. This is a musician soloist. When she was performing with us, her husband was jailed for three years and tortured.”
Despite the threats faced, Shen Yun said it is not deterred and has not cancelled any performance.
