Just Saying | Is there no limit to US hypocrisy in exploiting Hong Kong’s crisis?
- Yonden Lhatoo calls out grandstanding American politicians who care nothing for the well-being of the city while using it as a pawn against Beijing
I sat and suffered through a 45-minute media session with Ted Cruz some weeks ago at the US consul general’s home in Hong Kong, listening to the Republican senator pontificate about the worst political and social crisis since the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
He sermonised about how repressive and intolerant the Hong Kong government had become – never mind that he had not only been allowed to enter the city but also to openly bad mouth its officials. And he railed against Beijing, gloating that it was “terrified” of how China’s larger population was reacting to the civil unrest in Hong Kong – oblivious to the fact that the anarchy plaguing our city of 7.5 million actually works to the Communist Party’s propagandist advantage in convincing more than 1.4 billion people across the border that without its unifying leadership, the alternative is chaos of this sort.
Even more astonishing, on the very day that radical protesters were firebombing a train station and vandalising public property in the name of democracy, was Cruz’s insistence that he himself had never heard, or seen evidence, of violence till date over more than four months of lawlessness.
And yet there he was, grandstanding to glory, playing the great white saviour to an audience of star-spangled-banner-waving natives who naively believe that unscrupulous American politicians have the best interests of Hongkongers at heart when they push for legislation aimed at penalising the city to spite Beijing in the name of protecting our rights and freedoms.
