Chinese Communist Party-controlled Hong Kong — under the National Security Law — has issued arrest warrants for six democracy activists.
I was not honored with inclusion.
“But Paul,” you sputter, “you do not live in China!”
Well, neither do those activists — all six now live outside the territory.
Passed in secret in Beijing and imposed on Hong Kong, the new law basically criminalizes opposition to the CCP.
ALL opposition. Anywhere. Anytime. Ex post facto.
“The law criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference,” CNN explains, “and it applies to offenses committed ‘outside the region’ by foreigners who are not residents of Hong Kong or China.”
One fugitive from injustice is Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong lawmaker and a leader of 2014’s Umbrella Movement. “I was prepared when I left Hong Kong to be in exile,” Mr. Law said on social media, explaining his departure when the draconian new law took effect, “but . . . who can enjoy freedom from fear in the face of China’s powerful political machine?”
Hong Kong officials maintain that there is “no retrospective effect” to the law, but that seems obviously untrue in Law’s case, and others’.*
Samuel Chu with the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, a U.S. citizen for two decades, also graces the list. “I might be the 1st non-Chinese citizen to be targeted, but I will not be the last,” tweeted Chu. “If I am targeted, any American/any citizen of any nation who speaks out for HK can-and will be-too.”
Last year, when the protests first began, I wrote “I Am Hong Kong.” A year later? Even the CCP ominously agrees with Mr. Chu’s conclusion: “We are all Hong Kongers now.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* “Other activists targeted include Simon Cheng, a former employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong who was granted asylum in the United Kingdom after alleging that he was tortured in China and interrogated by secret police about the city’s pro-democracy protests,” according to CNN, “and Hong Kong pro-independence activists Ray Wong, Honcques Laus and Wayne Chan.”
Note: Before these indictments, Hong Kong authorities tossed a dozen pro-democracy candidates off the ballot for September’s election. And then suspended the election for a year citing the pandemic — obviously wanting to avoid another massive election defeat for the CCP-puppet government.
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2 replies on “All Together Now”
It’s almost like the Chinese regime thinks it’s the US regime (which recently prevailed upon the Canadian regime to arrest a Chinese citizen for trading with North Korean customers in violation of US law).
It is a good point that the US “regime” often makes this same attempt to enforce US law as international law just as China is doing with the National Security Law in Hong Kong in seeking to enforce Chinese law as international law. It is a problem.
But as much as I am sure we would agree on a long list of US abuses at home and abroad in our foreign policy, there is hardly moral equivalence with the totalitarian CCP in China that puts 1-2M Uighurs in concentration camps; censors speech, crushes dissent, imprisons non-violent pro-democracy folks; threatens military attack against Taiwan and uses capital punishment against prisoners, including political prisoners (such as Falun Gong adherents), for organ harvesting. For starters.