Why the US wants to sanction HK’s judiciary and the ICC
- Washington seems intent on destroying international law as it stands with Israel, which is under a cloud of genocide charges and arrest warrants
The human mind compartmentalises, according to psychologists, to avoid distress from having to address morally or cognitively conflicting experiences together.
That seems to be a prerequisite for holding high office in Washington. It was on full display by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week as he testified before both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In the House committee, he said the United States was ready to punish more local police and judicial officers for “undermining Hong Kong’s basic autonomy”.
He was, Blinken said, “looking across the board” and “taking necessary actions” including sanctions. He was responding to a question from House committee member Young Kim, and more specifically, to a list of 49 judges, prosecutors and the police chief from Hong Kong that Young and two other congressional colleagues had compiled in their proposed Hong Kong sanctions act for legislation.
The list includes: Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok, Commissioner of Police Raymond Siu Chak-yee, and High Court judges Esther Toh Lye-ping, Andrew Chan Hing-wai and Alex Lee Wan-tang.
Try to wrap your head around that. Washington is interfering with the juridical system of Hong Kong and therefore its internal affairs because the city is “undermining” its own autonomy. Why is it any of America’s business anyway? Kim and her House committee colleagues must have been gratified by Blinken’s answer, as she would no doubt have felt the same about his response before the Senate committee, though she was not present there.
Kim has been most gung-ho in her support of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, and that’s a distinction when most of Congress have been bending over backwards to prove their loyalty to what is supposedly a foreign country. Blinken told the Senate committee that the Joe Biden administration would consider Republican proposals to retaliate against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and “take it from there”.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor has applied for international arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence chief Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
In a show of solidity, Netanyahu has been invited to address a joint session of Congress.
Imagine that. While Blinken, Kim and most of her congressional colleagues are busy standing shoulder to shoulder with an alleged war criminal, they find time to fret about Hong Kong undermining its own autonomy. Their compartmentalisation was so great that the incongruity between their defence of mass murder in Gaza and the erosion of autonomy in Hong Kong completely eluded them.
Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice, which is already examining a case of alleged genocide against Israel, has ordered the country to immediately halt its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
About 2,000 aid trucks have been stuck on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing since the latest deadly assault started.
Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Oona Hathaway, a former special counsel to the general counsel at the US Department of Defense, pointed out that “Israel has made clear that it intends to attack the court [the ICC], not cooperate with it. Many have argued the United States should join the Israelis in this effort.”
That would include Blinken.
“Indeed, earlier this month,” Hathaway wrote, “12 Republican senators signed a letter promising to retaliate against the court if the cases proceed. ‘Target Israel and we will target you’,” they warned, threatening to sanction ICC employees and associates, and even their family members.
Hathaway, now a top law professor at Yale, seems to have come to a revelation: “Sanctioning the court and its officials would send a clear message: the United States’ commitment to international justice is not principled but purely political.”
The entire world has known that for decades, and that’s precisely why it is attacking Hong Kong.
