Say goodbye to your bank accounts — the real ‘cancel culture’ in Anglo-America
- Banking is a fundamental utility like water and electricity, and that’s precisely why democratic societies are increasingly turning to its use as a method of censorship and repression
Accusing politicians of hypocrisy is mostly a pointless exercise. It’s a bit like chastising prostitutes for not practising chastity. Sometimes, though, they do take the cake when they jump on their soapboxes and point fingers at convenient targets to better distract people from noticing what their own government has been doing.
For example, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have been attacking HSBC for refusing to return the Mandatory Provident Fund pensions of Hong Kong people who have moved to the United Kingdom under the BN(O) scheme. They make it sound like the bank is the only one doing it, and that the “victims’” accounts have effectively been confiscated by the Chinese/Hong Kong government. None of that is true.
The real issue, of course, is that BN(O) passports are no longer recognised as valid documents in Hong Kong, and all financial institutions in the city must follow this rule, not just HSBC.
British passports and other citizenship proofs are still considered valid, so yes, those BN(O)ers can get their full pensions back if/when they get their permanent residency or citizenship in the UK – because then, they will have valid documents to prove retirement or emigration. However, it’s increasingly clear that the UK government will end up rejecting many of them, as the reality behind the BN(O) scam, sorry, I meant scheme, sinks in.
Those who are rejected can, of course, return to Hong Kong. They may then retire and get their full pensions back. Otherwise, they can work and continue to contribute to their MPF accounts until retirement. Their money is safe.
Meanwhile, whose money is not safe? Well, that’s actually the real scandal I want to write about today. Banks and financial institutions in the UK, the United States and Canada have been cancelling people’s accounts left, right and centre, for their political views and/or activities.
MPF ban on BN(O) withdrawals actually works in holders’ favour
Welcome to the real “cancel culture” of the Anglo-American world.
Nigel Farage, Mr Brexit himself, made a big fuss in the UK this month when he had his bank account cancelled without notice by the upmarket lender Coutts. Suddenly, that became international news like it was something new. Actually, the practice has been going on for years in North America and the UK. But it only became news when Farage was the victim.
As reported by Middle East Eye, an online news magazine, Muslims and Islamic groups have been similarly targeted by banks in the UK for years. Charities such as Interpal, which focuses on Palestinian welfare in the Occupied Territories, has had its bank accounts cancelled; likewise the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign group, as well as the head of the Cordoba Foundation, an NGO promoting Muslim-Jewish understanding, and his family members.
Such cases didn’t make mainstream news in the UK. After all, the targets were Muslims, not someone like Farage.
Over in Canada, according to a Toronto Star report from August last year, “This is exactly the scenario facing an increasing number of charities across Canada’s growing Muslim community.
“Mosques, schools, community centres, food banks, and humanitarian groups operating as charities that issue tax receipts are being embargoed by major banks and online financial services. This cripples the organisation, which is left wondering whether they are being treated fairly by powerful financial institutions and what, if anything, they can do about it.”
Explanations are rarely given, but it’s usually assumed to have something to do with the increasingly loose interpretation by private financial institutions of international standards on anti-money-laundering and the list of “politically exposed persons”.
Such incidents only caught public attention in Canada after the infamous application of the Emergencies Act by the Justin Trudeau government to detain the leaders and organisers of the truckers’ protests and freeze their bank accounts early last year. The protests, which were largely peaceful if noisy, were against Covid-19 restrictions.
It transpired that Canadian bank CEOs explicitly warned Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland the day before the federal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act about risks to the country’s reputation, saying that Canada was being called a “joke”.
This is the same government that criticised the Hong Kong government’s handling of more than six months of highly destructive riots in 2019. A joke indeed!
Hongkongers voice concerns over UK plan to raise BN(O) fees, health surcharge
In the US, it’s the same story. Last week, Jewish-American political writer and activist Elad Nehorai tweeted how Bank of America had shut down his account. “They shut down my account [without] any notice or explanation,” he wrote, “and we won’t be able to feed our family or pay medical expenses. We are staying here until it’s fixed. So far they have refused to even explain why they did this.
“For the record this is relatively common, and they apparently purposefully refuse to let you find out any information at all. The process can drag out for months while people wait for money to feed their families.”
Such victims are often blacks and Muslims. Last year, a teacher, who is black, had her account cancelled by Bank of America just when she was about to undergo treatment for thyroid cancer and needed the money for it.
In recent years, dissident artist Ai Weiwei and activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung, who is awaiting national security trial while serving sentences for protest-related offences stemming from the 2019 riots, have complained about HSBC refusing them service. But that’s very different from having your bank accounts shut down and your assets frozen without warning or reasons given.
Banking is a fundamental utility such as water and electricity. In a modern society, you just can’t function without it. And that’s precisely why supposedly free societies are increasingly turning to its use as a method of censorship and repression.
