My Take | Canadian and American pots call the Hong Kong kettle black
- When it comes to prosecuting anti-government protesters, Canada, the United States and Hong Kong have shown similar vengefulness
This is a question that has been troubling me for a long time now. Why is the prosecution of protesters in Hong Kong from the months-long anti-government riots in 2019 politically repressive in the way that the prosecutions of those involved in the Canadian and American uprisings against their governments are not?
Put another way, why is it an article of faith, almost a statement of fact, that the Hong Kong cases are illegitimate on moral, legal and political grounds while those in the two Western countries are justified on all grounds?
On a superficial level, we all know why. Western media usually claim that those in Hong Kong were fighting for democracy while those involved in the January 6, 2021 storming of Capitol Hill and those in the so-called Freedom Convoy in Canada were trying to subvert democracy, or at least their own elected governments.
But there’s a problem. Those who stormed the US Congress thought they were answering the call of their president, Donald Trump, who claimed his rival Joe Biden and the Democratic Party had stolen the election. In their minds, they were defending democracy and freedom, not subverting them. If violence was necessary, so be it.
I can appreciate that many people, both Americans and foreigners, think those rioters on January 6 were domestic far-right extremists.
In a similar way, I think many of those rioters were just thugs who plunged Hong Kong into more than half a year of chaos and destruction. Of course they didn’t think they were burning down Hong Kong, but fighting for democracy and freedom. I should, however, qualify that many explicitly claimed that they would burn down the city for the sake of fighting for democracy. Certainly many were driven by other grievances, but it was much easier and simpler to sloganise about freedom and democracy.