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general freedom

Freedom’s Front Lines

coronavirus, Covid, China, police, protest,

Last weekend, riot police broke up a candlelight vigil for Chow Tsz-​lok, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology student, who died back in November. He had fallen a story from a parking garage as Hong Kong police were “clearing a group of anti-​government protesters.”

“Police said they seized petrol bombs, bricks and other protest items from the car park where the memorial was held,” reports the South China Morning Post. “Officers then stopped rally-​goers from leaving and checked their identity cards and bags, arresting more than 40 people for unlawful assembly.”

If the police can be believed. 

They can’t. 

As Tom Grundy, editor-​in-​chief of Hong Kong Free Press, puts it: “[P]eople just don’t trust the Government.”

While people were violently arrested, it wasn’t for violence or weapons. It was for daring to use what we call “freedom of assembly.”

Now with the spread of the COVID-​19 virus, protesters have been reluctant to call for mass gatherings. Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-​based regional director of Amnesty International, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “The authorities may be counting on the coronavirus epidemic to extinguish the unrest.”*

On Friday, authorities used the lull to charge three prominent pro-​democracy leaders — Jimmy Lai, owner of media highly critical of China; Yeung Sum, the former Democratic Party chairman; and the Labour Party vice-​chairman, Lee Cheuk-​yan — for taking part in a protest march last year.

They join more than 7,000 demonstrators arrested since the protest movement began last June. 

Young people — and some not-​so-​young — are risking their very lives for freedom, for the right to choose their leaders … knowing that without such basic mechanisms, they have no defense against the Butchers of Beijing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Amnesty International has called for an “independent investigation into police violence.”

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ideological culture international affairs too much government

All the Tyranny in China

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Are you going to make a big fuss?

I mean, about China — dominated by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Because some people get all bent out of shape over their totalitarian government placing a million or two Muslim Uighurs into re-​education camps surrounded by high walls and razor wire in order to browbeat, brainwash and torture away their ethnic heritage, language, and religious beliefs. 

Folks also complain about the insidious social credit system and the massive surveillance state, both of which would make Orwell blush; the ugly history of Chinese repression in Tibet; threats to invade peaceful neighboring Taiwan and snuff out their budding democratic experiment; not to mention Tiananmen Square. 

Some cannot get over the estimated 400 million babies murdered by the CCP against the will and amidst the anguished cries of their loving parents. Of course, that old “One Child Policy” has been “liberalized” … now permitting two children. 

Moreover, the CCP’s assault on free inquiry and public dialogue is no longer limited to just silencing their own citizens — as infamous attempts to squelch criticism from universities in Australia and here in America, as well as basketball players, show.

Presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said months ago that Chinese President Xi Jinping was “not a dictator” and “has a constituency to answer to.” At Wednesday night’s debate, he was asked about those remarks.

“In terms of whether he’s a dictator,” Bloomberg explained, “he does serve at the behest of the Politburo, of their group of people, but there’s no question he has an enormous amount of power.”

“But he does play to his constituency,” he reiterated. Sure, all 25 unelected communist insiders (ruling over 1.4 billion disenfranchised Chinese).

Acknowledging that their human rights record is “abominable,” Bloomberg agreed that “we should make a fuss, which we have been doing, I suppose.” 

But … “make no mistake about it, we have to deal with China if we’re ever going to solve the climate crisis. We have to deal with them because our economies are inextricably linked.”

Yes, indeed … with eyes wide open to the totalitarian brutality of the CCP’s Xi Jinping-​led, 25-​person dictatorship. 

We need a lot bigger fuss.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Most Deadly Disease

Anyone knowledgeable about medicine — or history, for that matter — is taking very, very seriously the coronavirus outbreak in China, and its subsequent spread across the globe, including to the U.S.

More than 70,000 Chinese have been diagnosed and over 1,700 have died, along with one death in each of France, Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines. 

Over the weekend, Taiwan — the independent island nation a hundred miles off the coast of a hostile, threatening People’s Republic of China (PRC) — announced its first fatality. The deceased Taiwanese taxi driver, whose health was already compromised by diabetes and hepatitis B, likely caught the virus from customers traveling from China. 

Last week, China finally allowed the World Health Organization to allow Taiwanese experts to participate in discussions about containing the virus. Unlike China, Taiwan boasts one of the best medical systems in the world.

Also over the weekend, news broke that Chinese President Xi Jinping had mentioned the coronavirus in a speech given many weeks before officials first alerted the public. 

That’s how the totalitarian PRC rolls. At all levels. One victim of the virus is Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned back in December that the disease was spreading. First, he was reprimanded and then “apprehended by Wuhan police for spreading ‘rumours,’” reported Aljazeera. 

“As more information leaks out from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak,” a recent Taipei Times editorial argues, “it is clear that Beijing was unable to prevent the virus from spreading out of control precisely because it lacks the accountability, freedom of speech and free flow of information that form the bedrock of democracies.”

Yet another way that freedom affirms life and totalitarian tyranny kills. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tough Time for Tyrants

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How much longer does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have to put up with freedom-​loving loudmouths?

Thoughtful Party rulers can’t even entertain their subjects with NBA basketball or English Premier League soccer without fear that Chinese fans will then discover the tweet of some busybody droning on against Chinese repression in Hong Kong or complaining about a scant million or so Uighurs checked into friendly re-​education camps. 

Last month, Chen Chia-​chin, a Taiwanese YouTuber known as the Potter King, with a “considerable following on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” dared post a video featuring Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-​wen. She is the first female president of that island nation, and on the ballot for re-​election this Saturday. 

Moreover, she has quite ungraciously declined China’s magnanimous offer to take over Taiwan, by force if necessary, under the “One China, Two Systems” banner. And the CCP even offered to toss in tear gas for free!

Back to the vicious attack on Chinese sovereignty by this Potter King fellow, he also referred to President Tsai as … [are you sitting down?] … “president.” 

“Chinese media avoids mentioning ‘Taiwan president,’” explains Mothership, a Singapore-​based news site, “as it implies that Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country.”*

Bad enough to say something the CCP doesn’t want said, but the Potter King went further — refusing to un-say it. His videos are still watched by half a million subscribers on YouTube. 

Of course, China beneficently bans YouTube. And Papitube, the Chinese agency marketing his program, has now nullified his contract.

Chen Chia-chin’s prioritization of freedom mustn’t be allowed. But what if the prioritization of Taiwanese voters tomorrow cannot be stopped?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Not to mention that Taiwan suffers from the twin political ailments, in the CCP’s view, of freedom and democracy.

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Totalitarianized

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Legislation introduced last April to allow the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China motivated millions into the streets in protests that have not yet ended … 

… including a major pro-​democracy rally scheduled for tomorrow in Causeway Bay.

Traveling to Hong Kong and Taiwan months ago, the glimpse I caught of Hongkongers’ courageous struggle spurs me to applaud George Will’s judgment in Sunday’s Washington Post: “Nothing more momentous happened” in 2019. 

The extradition bill has been withdrawn, sure, but Hongkongers know well that without real democracy they have no long-​term hope of avoiding the repressive rule of the Chinese Communist Party … which may no longer be “communist,” but remains totally totalitarian.

Ask a million Uighurs. 

Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-​installed chief executive, has long labeled the protesters “selfish rioters.” But new pro-​democracy candidates won nearly 90 percent of seats in last month’s local elections, demonstrating which side the public is on. 

This year began with newly un-​term-​limited Chinese President Xi Jinping threatening military action against Taiwan. The island nation of 24 million, some 100 miles off the coast of the mainland, has been offered the same “one country, two systems” arrangement China has with Hong Kong … what Mr. Will dubbed “a formula for the incremental suffocation of freedom.”

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-​wen, is “loathed by Beijing,” reports the South China Morning Post, “because her party refuses to accept the idea that Taiwan is part of the so-​called one-​China principle which denies the island’s independence.” 

Her opponent in the upcoming national election on the 11th, like some in the NBA, “favours much warmer relations with mainland China.”

The Taiwanese, however — like Hongkongers — appear increasingly resistant to being totalitarianized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

2019 Commentaries on Hong Kong and Taiwan

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Beacon of Liberty

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What part should we play in terror, torture, oppression?

Asking for a friend. 

Well, friends … some three-​hundred-​and-​thirty million of them.

Egypt. The government of President Abdel Fattah el-​Sisi just stormed the newsroom of one of Egypt’s few remaining independent media outlets, Mada Masr. 

“Mada has shown nothing but courage in reporting the news against all odds,” a representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) offered bitterly, “and in the face of brutal repression.” 

According to the CPJ, Egypt is the world’s top jailer of journalists. And that repression is not just well-​documented, it is also well-​funded. By … well … Sisi’s state receives roughly $1.5 billion in annual U.S. military and economic assistance, while Egyptians must “forgo democratic liberties” as “authorities” maintain “a constant crackdown … encompassing anyone criticizing the government,” informs a Congressional Research Service report updated last week. 

Iraq. Anti-​government protests are in full swing, with Iraqis “demanding an end to corruption, more jobs and better public services,” the BBC informs. More than 300 people have been killed by the government the American military set up, and nearly 15,000 injured as Iraqi Security forces have used tear gas and live bullets against protesters.

Hong Kong. The smashing victory for pro-​democracy candidates in the former British colony, who “won almost 90 percent of the seats” in local elections, was the weekend’s bright spot. Voters sent an unequivocal message.

Now on President Trump’s desk is the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (H.R.3289), which puts the territory’s special trading status at risk should China impinge on its autonomy.

Will our president sign the legislation or exchange it with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a better trade deal?

Funding, facilitating oppression is no way to serve as a beacon of liberty to the world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo: Studio Incendo /​ Photo: Flazingo Photos

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