My Take | America has never been a champion of democracy
- Study recent US history of foreign aggression and Hongkongers may come to a very different conclusion about Washington’s profession of noble intention towards their city
While discussing the national security law, former Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing quoted a US diplomat, who proudly told him the United States had overthrown authoritarian regimes and replaced them with democratic ones.
The history of America’s foreign aggression has been rather the opposite, that is, it either directly overthrew or helped in the overthrow of democratically elected leaders or otherwise popular governments in favour of military juntas or dictatorships. The list is long, so I will only cite a few lesser known – to Hong Kong people anyway – but horrifying episodes.
● “In 1965 and 1966, the American government assisted in the murder of approximately 1 million Indonesian civilians,” wrote Vincent Bevins, author of the newly published The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anti-communist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World.
“The US-backed military [led by Suharto] used a failed uprising as a pretext to crush the Indonesian left.”
● In 1973, the CIA helped foment a coup, personally approved by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, against the democratically elected Salvador Allende Gossens in Chile, which brought to power the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. The general would go on to run Operation Condor – a reign of terror against opponents and the general populace across South America – along with other US-allied military dictatorships in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.