Public Eye | Britain has already failed in its 'moral obligation' to HK

Humbug - that is what Public Eye says to Britain's insistence that it has a "moral obligation" towards Hong Kong under the 1997 handover treaty. Where was this "moral obligation" back in the 1980s when it mattered most? Instead of doing the morally right thing for millions of Hongkongers fearful of their fate under a communist regime, Britain locked them out by downgrading their British passports into worthless Mickey Mouse documents. What was it that the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher said to justify the shameful erosion of the rights of British subjects here? Oh yes, she said she did not want Britain to be "swamped". Then-governor Chris Patten had to squeeze blood out of stone to get his government to grudgingly issue full British passports to Hong Kong-born ethnic minorities who would otherwise become stateless. Now three decades later, Hugo Swire, the British minister for Hong Kong affairs, has the gall to say Britain has a moral obligation towards the city. To Mr Swire we say this: Your moral obligation came and went 30 years ago when Britain made it crystal clear it did not want to be swamped by Hongkongers. Britain no longer has any moral authority to talk about Hong Kong. Britain cannot even fulfil its moral duty to speedily renew the Mickey Mouse document that is the British National (Overseas) passport for the dwindling number of Hongkongers who still want them, making them wait months for something that even poor nations can do in just days.

Here is what the Hong Kong police should tell Britain: "Shove it, we will buy our tear gas elsewhere." The London government expressed moral outrage, even threatening to halt tear-gas sales to Hong Kong, after the police used British-made tear gas on Occupy protesters. It then flip-flopped and said sales would continue. But a British official has now said it will again consider blocking sales. Will someone please tell Public Eye from where Britain derives its moral authority to question our police force's use of tear gas? Was this not the country that conspired with former US president George W. Bush to rain bombs on Iraq on the phoney pretext that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Goodness knows how many innocent Iraqis those British bombs killed. And now London has the nerve to act all moral by questioning the use of tear gas by the Hong Kong police? Again, humbug.