Through
the summer the world has watched as protests shook Hong Kong. As early as April
they began as peaceful demonstrations which peaked in early June, with hundreds
of thousands, in protest of an extradition bill. That bill would have allowed
Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, to return criminals to
Taiwan, mainland China or Macau for crimes committed there – after approval by
multiple layers of the Hong Kong judiciary. In the wake of those enormous
nonviolent demonstrations, Carrie Lam, CEO of Hong Kong, “suspended”
consideration of the extradition bill, a face-saving ploy. To make sure she was
understood, she declared it “dead.” The large rallies, an undeniable expression
of the peaceful will of a large segment of the Hong Kong population had won an
impressive victory. The unpopular extradition bill was slain.
But that was not the end of the story. A
smaller segment continued the protests. (The Hong Kong police at one point
estimated 4,000 hard core protesters.) pressed on with other demands, beginning
with a demand that the bill be “withdrawn,” not simply “suspended.” To this
writer death by “suspension” is every bit as terminal as death by “withdrawal.”
As this piece is sent to press, news comes that Corrie Lam has now formally withdrawn the bill.
As the summer passed, two iconic photos
presented us with two human faces that captured two crucial features of the
ongoing protests; they were not shown widely in the West.
First, Fu Guohao, a
reporter for the Chinese mainland newspaper, Global Times, was attacked, bound
and beaten by protesters during their takeover of the Hong Kong International
Airport. When police and rescuers tried to free him, the protesters blocked
them and also attempted to block the ambulance that eventually bore him off to
the hospital. The photos and videos of this ugly sequence were seen by netizens
across the globe even though given scant attention in Western media. Where were
the stalwart defenders of the press in the US as this happened? As one example,
DemocracyNow! (DN!) was completely silent as was the rest of the U.S.
mainstream media.
Fu’s
beating came after many weeks when the protesters threw up barriers to stop
traffic; blocked closure of subway doors, in defiance of commuters and police,
to shut down mass transit; sacked and vandalized the HK legislature building;
assaulted bystanders who disagreed with them; attacked the police with Molotov
cocktails; and stormed and defaced police stations. Fu’s ordeal and all these
actions shown in photos on
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, a paper leaning to the side of
protesters, gave the lie to the image of these “democracy activists” as young
Ghandis of East Asia. (The South China Morning Post is based in Hong Kong and
its readership is concentrated there so it has to have some reasonable fidelity
in reporting events; otherwise it loses credibility – and circulation.
Similarly, much as the New York Times abhorred Occupy Wall Street, it could not
fail to report on it.)
Which
brings us to the second photo, much more important to U.S. citizens, that of a
“Political Counselor” at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong who in August
was pictured meeting with, Joshua Long and Nathan Law, at a hotel there. The
official was formerly a State Dept functionary in the Middle East – in
Jerusalem, Riyadh, Beirut, Baghdad and Doha, certainly not an area lacking in
imperial intrigues and regime change ops. That photo graphically contradicted
the contention that there is no US “black hand,” as China calls it, in the Hong
Kong riots. In fact, here the “black hand” was caught red-handed, leading Chen
Weihua, a very perceptive China Daily columnist, to tweet the picture with the
comment: “This is very very embarrassing. … a US diplomat in Hong Kong, was
caught meeting HK protest leaders. It would be hard to imagine
the US reaction if a Chinese diplomat were meeting leaders of Occupy Wall
Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters.”
And
that photo with the protest leaders is just a snap shot of the ample evidence
of the hand of the U.S. government and its subsidiaries in the Hong Kong
events. Perhaps the best documentation of the U.S. “black hand” is to be
found in Dan Cohen’s superb article of
August 17 in The Greyzone entitled, “Behind a made-for-TV Hong Kong protest
narrative, Washington is backing nativism and mob violence.” The article by
Cohen deserves careful reading; it leaves little doubt that there is a very
deep involvement of the US in the Hong Kong riots. Of special interest is the
detailed role and funding,
amounting to over $1.3 million, in Hong Kong alone in recent years, of the U.S.
National Endowment for Democracy (NED), ever on the prowl for new regime change
opportunities. Perhaps most important, the leaders of the “leaderless” protests
have met with major US political figures such as John Bolton, Vice President
Pence, Secretary Pompeo, Senator Marco Rubio, Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel,
Nancy Pelosi and others, all of whom have heartily endorsed their efforts. This
is not to deny that the protests were home grown at the outset in response to
what was widely perceived as a legitimate grievance. But it would be equally
absurd to deny that the U.S. is fishing in troubled Hong Kong waters to advance
its anti-China crusade and regime change ambitions.
That said, where is the U.S. peace movement
on the question of Hong Kong?
Let
us be clear. One can sympathize with the demand of many citizens of Hong Kong
to end the extradition bill or even the other four demands: an inquiry into
police handling of their protests; the retraction of a government
characterization of the demonstrations as riots; an amnesty for arrested
protesters; and universal suffrage. (The first three all grow out of violence
of the protests, be it noted.) But that is the business of the citizens of Hong
Kong and all the rest of China. It is not the business of the U.S. government.
Peace activists in the US should be hard at work documenting and denouncing the
US government’s meddling in Hong Kong, which could set us on the road to war
with China, potentially a nuclear war. And that is a mission for which we in
the U.S. are uniquely suited since, at least in theory, we have some control over
our government.
So,
we should expect to hear the cry, “US Government, Hands Off Hong Kong”? Sadly,
with a few principled exceptions it is nowhere to be heard on either the left
or right.
Let’s
take DemocracyNow! (DN!) as one example, a prominent one on the “progressive”
end of the spectrum. From April through August 28, there have been 25 brief
accounts (“headlines” as DN! calls them, each amounting to a few paragraphs) of
the events in Hong Kong and 4 features, longer supposedly analytic pieces, on
the same topic. Transcripts of the four features are here, here, here and here. There
is not a single mention of possible US involvement or the meetings of the
various leaders of the protest movement with Pompeo, Bolton, Pence, or the
“Political Counselor” of the US Hong Kong consulate.
And this silence on US meddling is true not
only of most progressive commentators but also most conservatives.
On
the Left when someone cries “Democracy,” many forget all their pro-peace
sentiment. And similarly on the Right when someone cries “Communism,”
anti-interventionism too often goes down the tubes. Forgotten is John Quincy Adams’s 1823 dictum,
endlessly quoted but little honored, “We do not go abroad in search of monsters
to destroy.” Where does this lapse on the part of activists come from?
Is it a deep-seated loyalty to Empire, the result of endless indoctrination? Is
it U.S. Exceptionalism, ingrained to the point of unconsciousness? Or is it at
bottom a question of who the paymasters are?
On
both sides anti-interventionism takes an especially hard hit when it comes to
major competitors of the US, powers that could actually stand in the way of US
global hegemony, like Russia or China. In fact on its August 12 program, DN!
managed a story taking a swipe at Russia right
next to the one on Hong Kong – and DN! was in the forefront of advancing the
now debunked and disgraced Russiagate Conspiracy Theory. In contrast, the
anti-interventionist movement is front and center when it comes to weaker
nations, for example Venezuela – and quite properly so. But when one puts this
advocacy for weaker nations together with the New Cold War stance on China and Russia,
one must ask what is going on here. Does it betoken a sort of imperial
paternalism on the part of DN and like-minded outlets? It certainly gains DN!,
and others like it, considerable credibility among anti-interventionists which
can help win them to a position in favor of DN!’s New Cold War stance. And the
masters of Empire certainly understand how valuable such credibility can be at
crucial moments when support for their adventures is needed from every quarter.
Fortunately, there are a handful of exceptions
to this New Cold War attitude. For example, on the left Popular Resistance has
provided a view of
the events in Hong Kong and a superb interview with K.J. Noh that
go beyond the line of the State Department, the mainstream media and DN! And on
the libertarian Right there is the Ron Paul Institute for
Peace and Prosperity and the work of
its Executive Director Dan McAdams.
We would all do well to follow the
example of these organizations in rejecting a New Cold War mentality which is
extremely dangerous, perhaps fatally so. A good beginning for us in the U.S. is
to demand of our government, “Hands Off Hong Kong.”
John V. Walsh can be reached
at john.endwar@gmail.com
http://www.unz.com/article/hands-off-hong-kong-the-cry-that-seldom-is-heard/