"A good example,” said Pope Francis, “brings about so much good, but hypocrisy brings about so much evil.”
After the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO) was enacted on March 19, the US and its allies reacted with predictable fury. As Hong Kong had finally discharged its national responsibilities, they realized it was no longer possible for them to use it as a base for destabilizing China. After 1997, they saw the city as the country’s Achilles’ heel, which explains why they encouraged the insurrection of 2019-20 and patronized selected proxies, including the now-defunct Civic Party.
Although those days are over, the US is incensed. It is determined to retaliate against the city whose future it had hoped to influence. Impervious to reason, it is bent on harming Hong Kong, even if it undermines its people’s livelihoods.
On March 30, the US State Department said that, apart from continuing to deny Hong Kong the special trading status it revoked in 2020, it also planned to impose visa restrictions on Hong Kong officials involved in enacting the SNSO. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said “multiple” officials would be targeted, as they were “responsible for the intensifying crackdown on rights and freedoms”. They needed to be held to account for the “intensifying repression” of “civil society, media and dissenting voices”.
However, Blinken’s professed concern for the media was hollow, and cannot be taken seriously. The US contempt for the press is now on public display in the UK, where it is mercilessly pursuing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange through the English courts. His 17 “crimes” consist of allegedly disclosing classified information that embarrassed Washington, particularly in relation to war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including its brutalization of prisoners. As his lawyers have explained, Assange is being victimized for engaging in the ordinary journalistic practices of obtaining and publishing information in the public interest, to which Blinken is oblivious.
Blinken’s hypocrisy, however, is deep-seated and was inherited from his predecessors. Although he claims to support the “global rules-based order”, this is a vacuous catchphrase beloved of Western hypocrites. Whereas he delights in slapping visa restrictions and other penalties on individuals from China and other places he sees as geopolitical rivals, evenhandedness forms no part of his repertoire.
Since the Gaza war started, the death toll has reached almost 33,000, mainly women and children. Another 75,000 have been injured, while many others are starving. Instead of sanctioning those responsible, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the chief of the general staff, Herzi Halevi, and calling for them to be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes before the International Criminal Court, Blinken has facilitated their offenses. Although, despite being Netanyahu’s aider and abettor, he will never stand trial, Israel’s crimes, to which the US is party, are of biblical proportions, and will forever rank among the world’s greatest wartime atrocities.
On April 1, CNN reported that the US government is about to approve the sale of 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion. These can then be used to kill an awful lot of Palestinians, as also can its other weaponry. Earlier, on March 6, the Washington Post reported the US “quietly approved and delivered” over 100 separate military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began, amounting to “thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid”.
Although this would have delighted the arms merchants, it did little to inspire faith in Blinken’s professed concerns for Gaza’s civilian population. Even the most subservient of US allies may be forgiven for wondering how Blinken can look himself in the mirror.
While Blinken has always had lots to say about “rights and freedoms” in Hong Kong, he is allowing Israel to get away with blue murder in Gaza. He has protected it at international forums and sought to rationalize its depredations. However, its excesses have become so horrific that even he, on March 25, felt unable to block the UN Security Council’s call for a temporary cease-fire for Ramadan.
Away from the war zone, Blinken’s duplicity is no less pronounced. When the UK introduced its National Security Act 2023 (NSA), he did not slap visa restrictions or other penalties on its principal architects, the then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, and the security minister, Tom Tugendhat. This was despite the NSA’s crackdown on the “rights and freedoms” Blinken claimed to be so concerned about in Hong Kong.
The “chilling effect” of the NSA’s espionage provisions was condemned in the British Parliament, not least for their impact on investigative journalism. It cracked down on civil liberties, giving the police extra powers of detention and curbing the pretrial rights of suspects, including access to lawyers. Although Blinken feigned fury when not-dissimilar measures were adopted in Hong Kong, he did not bat an eyelid when they occurred in the UK, which should surprise nobody.
Blinken’s hypocrisy, however, is deep-seated and was inherited from his predecessors. Although he claims to support the “global rules-based order”, this is a vacuous catchphrase beloved of Western hypocrites
His posturing over “rights and freedoms” has always been simply a convenient stick with which to beat people from places that reject US hegemony and refuse to dance to its tune.
Indeed, given his concern for “dissenting voices” in Hong Kong, it might have been expected Blinken would be up in arms over Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. It was the brainchild of its first minister, Humza Yousaf, and came into force on April 1, 2024. It has been called a “snitch’s charter”, criminalizing words that might be construed as “stirring up hatred”. If a “reasonable person” (a vague term) considers something said by somebody else to be “insulting” an offense may arise, with a suspect facing up to seven years’ imprisonment.
Yousaf’s new law has been denounced by free thinkers and ordinary Scots, and people are wondering if, in future, they should keep their views to themselves to be on the safe side.
The Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, a straight talker from Edinburgh, fears she may be targeted by the Hate Crime Act. She has regularly argued that trans women are not women, and that men who self-identify as women do not thereby become women. She has also maintained that convicted rapists who declare themselves to be females should not be housed in women’s prisons, supposedly a safe place. Although most people applaud her views, she is concerned they will expose her to charges, and attempts have already been made to prosecute her under what she calls a “ludicrous law”.
Since the new crime of “stirring up hatred” was introduced on April 1, Police Scotland has received over 3,000 hate crime reports, many paradoxically relating to Yousaf himself. He had previously highlighted white people holding prominent public roles, but fortunately for him, the new law is not retroactive. The community services minister, Siobhian Brown, said the law was being used to make “fake and vexatious complaints”, and police time is being wasted as people seek to settle old scores and bring down those whose views they dislike.
The Conservative Party’s Scottish justice spokesman, Russell Findlay, has pointed out that “Yousaf’s dangerous Hate Crime Act is already being weaponized on an industrial scale by thin-skinned troublemakers,” and a petition has been launched for its repeal.
The UK education secretary, Gillian Keegan, called Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act “a terrible bit of legislation”. She said the police “should be much more focused on fighting crime than policing people’s thoughts”. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, agreed, saying, “We believe in free speech in this country.”
If Blinken agrees with Sunak, Keegan and Findlay that Yousaf’s new law is an affront to Western notions of free speech, he is, presumably, planning to impose visa restrictions upon him and demanding its repeal. However, nobody should hold their breath, and Yousaf will likely escape repercussions. In the all-too-familiar traditions of American diplomacy, Blinken has no interest in intervening when “rights and freedoms” are violated in countries the US does not want to antagonize.
Whatever Blinken has planned for them, Hong Kong’s officials have done their duty and can hold their heads high. They must have expected him to try to harm them and braced themselves accordingly. Although his double standards are there for all to see, they at least have clear consciences.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
