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My Take | Putin to Biden: You say rioters, I say protesters
- Two wrongs don’t make a right but Putin’s Russia and Biden’s United States are right about each other’s suppression of dissent and crackdown on opposition – helped in both countries by a compliant news media, and in the US, a self-important and hypocritical press at that
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Say what you like about Russian President Vladimir Putin, but his latest criticism of the United States for its treatment of the Capitol “rioters” is right on the money.
The criticism followed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s similar claim that the Capitol “rioters” were being “persecuted” by the US government.
Speaking at a business forum in St Petersburg last week, Putin questioned why US protesters making political demands were called rioters but “rioters” making political demands in other countries were inevitably labelled “protesters”, however violent.
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“They weren’t just a crowd of robbers and rioters,” he said referring to the Capitol rioters, “Those people had come with political demands.”
Trump supporters stormed the US Congress on January 6 to disrupt a session to certify Joe Biden as the new president. About 500 of them have been arrested, with some being held in solitary confinement.
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The US has always condoned, encouraged, and even funded and trained anti-government groups in countries to which it is hostile under the guise of promoting democracy and human rights. We in Hong Kong have learned all about that in recent years.
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