My Take | Of course foreign forces are at work in Hong Kong
- Local opposition figures may laugh off such claims, but that doesn’t make them untrue as two incidents from last month may well show
Are there foreign forces interfering in Hong Kong affairs and fomenting unrest? Of course, there are. Just because local opposition figures laugh it off and ridicule such claims doesn’t make them untrue. And I am not even talking about long-ago, on-record funding of local anti-China groups by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is financed by the United States Congress.
Just consider two incidents from last month, a lively period of anti-government protests.
Riding on her high horse, but acting in the most irresponsible way possible, the British Labour Party’s shadow Asia minister, Helen Goodman, released the names of the most senior expatriate officers responsible for conducting anti-riot operations last month. The officers and their families have been subjected to vitriolic cyber attacks and physical threats.
How did Goodman identify the expat officer responsible for authorising the use of tear gas? Hong Kong police carefully guarded such operational details from the public, but it would not be difficult for British government agents, including those working at the consulate in Admiralty, to obtain them. After all, the local force was called, not long ago, the Royal Hong Kong Police. The British government just handed over, without a fight, the information to a member of the opposition on request. What did they think Goodman would do with it?
Another serious incident is a leaked Skype conversation between Chinese fugitive billionaire Guo Wengui, now in the US, and disqualified localist legislator Leung Chung-hang during a protest last month. Neither man has issued a denial.