My Take | Singapore did right by throwing out Hong Kong fugitive Nathan Law
The times when the US could manipulate opposition figures to destabilise governments in East Asia are long gone. How disappointing that all that investment has gone to waste
After he was denied entry to Singapore, many people have asked why Hong Kong fugitive Nathan Law Kwun-chung risked travelling there. Generally, dissidents and criminals from Hong Kong avoid Singapore and similar Asian countries with mutual extradition treaties.
Whether Law is a criminal or a dissident is in the eye of the beholder. But that question naturally comes to mind. It has apparently also troubled former Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying. Writing in a social media post, he suggested two possibilities, and they are not mutually exclusive.
“Nathan Law said he assumed he could enter Singapore because he had a visa,” Leung wrote. “There are two possibilities: one is that he knew he couldn’t enter and went there solely to gain exposure; the other is that he genuinely didn’t know Singapore would deny him entry. If the latter is the case, it shows he hasn’t corrected his political immaturity in Hong Kong. People with this kind of political immaturity are perfect puppet material.
“The organisation that invited Nathan Law to attend a forum in Singapore clearly intended to harm Singapore.”
An innocent bystander, Singapore certainly has the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to thank for all the global bad publicity, even though it was not its fault and that it did the only reasonable thing possible, which was to kick Law out.
What was the US think tank’s intention, a group with close ties to the liberal and foreign policy establishment in the United States, though it is notionally an “non-government” organisation?