Cheng Lei, formerly a political prisoner in China, has used her prisonexperience as the basis forstand-up comedy in Australia.

Cheng Lei is an Australian citizen who was working in China as a journalist for an Australianorganization. China allowed her to return to Australia. Chinese who have been politicalprisoners in China are often not allowed to leave China.

Using Eventbrite for access to an event is always bad because signing up using Eventbriterequires running nonfree software. Also, it requires identifying yourself. Those are twoinjustices to the attendee; I would not attend a performance if it required me to give my nameto get a ticket.

In this specific situation, the injustices put some attendees in danger, too. It would notsurprise me if Chinese crackers broke into the Eventbrite database to find out who attended this performance. The performers were aware that Chine would tryto identify the attendees; they should have protected their audience from digital identificationas well as from cameras.

And did they insist on making it possible to pay cash? As China demonstrates every day, makingpeople identify themselves to buy things is the foundation of repression.