Lenses on
Riots, Murder, and Racism in the US and Hong Kong
By Kim Petersen
May 30, 2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- The despicable police murder of a person, another
Black person, who allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill
has caused widespread revulsion among Americans. This
time, however, authorities acted relatively quickly
calling in the FBI and firing all four police officers
at the scene — Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and
J Alexander Kueng.
George Floyd, who did not resist,
was forcibly extricated from his vehicle by police,
handcuffed, whereupon officer Derek Chauvin knelt for 8
minutes on Floyd;s neck while he pleaded that he was
unable to breathe. Floyd’s death was the result.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has called for the
arrest of Chauvin, although not by the officer’s name.
Said Frey, “If you had done it or I had done it we would
be behind bars right now and I cannot come up with an
answer to that question.”
In contradistinction protestors have been
hastily arrested while protesting Floyd’s murder.
Even the media were not safe from being arrested for
covering the story of another police murder of a Black
man. The Save Journalism Project responded in a press
release:
The
arrest of CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew
on live television this morning simply for reporting
on the protests of police violence in Minneapolis
violates the most basic tenet of press freedom: the
necessity of reporting what are at times
uncomfortable truths for government authorities. The
government possesses enormous coercive power, that
as this episode clearly shows, can be all too easily
applied to limit or prevent the press from reporting
on their actions. The First Amendment exists
precisely for this reason.
The arrest of Jimenez even underscores the
reasons for the protests he was covering.
No one has been arrested in the killing of
George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. But
Jimenez, who like Floyd is black, has been arrested.
There was even another CNN crew near Jimenez at the
time of his arrest, but
Josh Campbell and his producers were, according
to Campbell, “treated much differently,” and were
obviously not arrested.
In the US, American journalists, especially if Black,
can be arrested … for what? Reporting a live story? To
curtail racism and prejudice from wider exposure? To
protect the crimes of the US gendarmerie from becoming
public knowledge?
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
Why did the police murder another black citizen. NBA
star Lebron James had no doubt.
Despite rampant racism and racism-inspired violence
in the US, the US continues to inveigh against the
alleged Chinese maltreatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and
Tibetans in Tibet. It has been refuted by others, such
as journalist Caleb Maupin, as
propaganda that seeks
to demonize the Chinese government.
Arresting versus expelling journalists
In mid-March, the Chinese government announced the
expulsion of journalists from the New York Times,
Wall Street Journal, and the Washington
Post.
The US mass media
struck back: “[N]ewsroom leaders criticized China’s
move, which comes in the midst of a global public health
crisis over COVID-19, the disease caused by
coronavirus.”
Trump said, “I’m not happy to see it. I have my own
disputes with all three of those media groups — I think
you know that very well — but I don’t like seeing that
at all.”
The Chinese action comes after Washington imposed
limitations on staff at Chinese state media outlets in
the US.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said,
The United States cannot proceed from ideological
prejudice, use its own standards and likes and
dislikes to judge the media of other countries, let
alone suppress the Chinese media unreasonably…. We
urge the US to take off its ideological prejudice,
abandon cold war mentality…. China is not one to
start trouble, but it will not blink if trouble
comes. We urge the US side to immediately stop
suppressing Chinese media, otherwise the US side
will lose even more.
Notably, Americans have also been prohibited from
working as journalists in Macau or Hong Kong.
A Comparison to China’s Response to the Riots
in Hong Kong
What about the protests/riots that have resumed in
Hong Kong? What triggered those protests? Some citizens
were
opposed to extradition of alleged criminals? How has
China responded to
rioting,
sabotage,
terrorism,
separatism, and even
murders by the so-called protestors? Hong Kong is a
territory having been a under British colonial
administration from 1841 to 1997 when it reverted to
mainland China as a special autonomous region; it must
be noted that once the original demands for rescinding
the extradition bill were met, the goal posts of the
NED-supported protestors transformed into a purported
democracy movement.
Has china responded with military force? No. With
arrests of law-abiding journalists? No. With police
brutality? Most observers will acknowledge that police
have been incredibly restrained, some would say too
restrained in the face of protestor violence.
The protestors, largely disaffected youth, as is
apparent in all or most video footage, by and large
employ random violence as a tactic, which they do not
condemn. This was made clear by Hong Kong protest leader
Joey Siu, during an interview with Deutsche Welle,
who said she “will not do any kind of public
condemnation” for the use of unjustified violence by
protesters against residents who do not share their
political views.
How has
Beijing responded? Legislatively, by seeking to uphold
the Basic Law, whose Article 23 mandated Hong Kong to
enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason,
secession, sedition, subversion against the Central
People’s Government. It is the normal case that nations
everywhere protect their national security. Hong Kong’s
South China Morning Post ran an
opinion piece titled
“If Hong Kong had enacted national security laws on its
own, Beijing wouldn’t be stepping in” which pointed out:
Beijing
trusted Hong Kong to implement Article 23, but its
trust was misplaced. The Basic Law is a two-way
street – it isn’t fair to accuse the central
government of failing to comply with the
mini-constitution when Hong Kong itself has not
fulfilled its obligations.
Extradition for crimes committed versus extradition for
exposing war crimes
The Hong
Kong imbroglio stems from the attempt to enact a bill to
permit extradition between Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan.
This was given impetus when Hong Kong resident Chan
Tong-kai, 20, murdered his girlfriend, Poon Hiu-wing,
20, while they were on vacation in Taiwan. To be
convicted of murder, he’d have to return to the
jurisdiction in which it occurred for trial. But there
is no extradition treaty between Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Chan did agree to return to Taiwan to face the charges,
but
Taiwan blocked his entry.
The absurdity
of this extradition conundrum is laid bare by the fact
that Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with Britain
and the US and not with its motherland, China. Thus, the
lack of an extradition arrangement prevents justice for
criminal acts such as murder among certain regions of
China.
Meanwhile
another bombastic evidence of western infidelity to
justice is the extradition that is sought for a man
whose “crime” was to reveal to the world the war crimes
of the US war machine. For this Julian Assange,
a man who should be protected by all humanity,
has seen his human rights obliterated and any shred of
western adherence to the concept of justice obliterated.
UPDATE:
In the
course of writing this article,
Derek Chauvin was taken into custody.
The other three officers who were aware of officer
Chauvin’s brutal and lethal act are in essence
accomplices and ought to be held culpable under the law
for their roles.
Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the
Dissident Voice
newsletter. He can be reached at:
kimohp@gmail.com.
Twitter:
@kimpetersen.
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