GUEST COLUMN, John Richard Schrock, Education Frontlines
The recent conviction of 45 Hong Kong demonstrators is seen differently in the U.S and Asia. 208 demonstrations, ranging from peaceful to violent, were carried out in Hong Kong between March 2019 and September 2020.
The earlier “umbrella revolution” in 2014 mainly focused on requirement that candidates to lead Hong Kong had to first be interviewed by Beijing to ensure they were not proponents of violating the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement. On August 31, 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress had required this screening of candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive position.
Could a separatist run for governor of a state in the United States? Such a U.S. secessionist would be guilty of sedition, just as a handful of the Jan. 6 rioters were found guilty in the U.S. But throughout the 2014 and 2019 Hong Kong riots, the U.S. press labeled these Hong Kong pro-secessionists as merely pro-democratic.
The Jan. 6, 2021 American insurrection occurred on just one day. So far, more than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes and over 900 of them have been convicted. Nearly 730 plead guilty to charges. An additional 186 have so far been convicted of at least one charge at trial.
In comparison, the Hong Kong secessionist demonstrations lasted for nearly nine months. Hong Kong’s equivalent to the U.S. Capitol is their Legislative Council Complex (Legco). On July 1, 2019, it was occupied by protesters who broke through the metal doors and glass walls to enter. They defaced portraits, smashed furniture, and spray-painted slogans. Fire-prevention systems were damaged, lockers ransacked, and hard disk drives stolen. In this one of many incidents, 15 police officers were injured.
And despite the Hong Kong demonstrations and riots having lasted most of a year, only 45 were convicted in last week’s local Hong Kong trial. And two cases were dismissed.
When a Republican Senator states: “since the 2019-2020 crackdown, the judiciary in Hong Kong has become an instrument of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] to target innocent civilians,” he shows profound ignorance of Hong Kong and mainland China’s different legal systems. Worldwide, there are three major legal traditions: civil law, common law, and Chinese law. Hong Kong operated under common law during its time as a British colony and continues under this system today. It is based on its Basic Law semi-constitution effective upon becoming a special region in China in 1997. Article 25 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law incorporates the aspects of the national law from Beijing and is little different from similar U.S. laws concerning “treason, secession, sedition, subversion and state secrets.”
The Alliance of Democracies commissions a worldwide survey and publishes results in its Democracy Perception Index annually. In data released in May 2021, they found “The only country to see a significant decline in the desire for more democracy is Hong Kong” that dropped 10 percentage points over their prior survey. This reflects a Hong Kong public fed up with the demonstrations that shut down much of Hong Kong the year before the pandemic.
Alex Lo, SCMP columnist writing from Toronto, puts the two-faced U.S. attitude toward the Hong Kong court’s actions in a perspective that many across Asia agree with, comparing it with the American reaction to Jan. 6. “Somehow, the U.S. political and media establishment has decided those involved weren’t patriots but ‘insurrectionists’, but those Hong Kong people who took part in the 2019-20 mayhem weren’t rioters but all were pro-democracy fighters.” Lo continues: “As someone once said, if you are only concerned with the human rights violations of your enemies, you are not concerned about human rights at all. What you are doing is to weaponise human rights and international law and to degrade them for the cheap and hypocritical purposes of propaganda and international-political antagonism.”
There is a lesson here for U.S. media, both mainstream and biased.
