RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-hong-kong-matters-11560466365

The young demonstrators in Hong Kong this week have done the world a favor. In calling attention to their plight, they are educating the rest of us in the nature of President Xi Jinping’s Communist Party rule in Beijing. Donald Trump in particular should be listening—and speaking up.

The demonstrators—and the million Hong Kongers who marched peacefully Sunday—object specifically to a pending law that would allow extradition from the territory to the Mainland. The people know this will put anyone who criticizes China in jeopardy of being sent to the Mainland for almost certain conviction and punishment. Hong Kong’s legacy of British law will still control—except in cases where China decides otherwise.

The official disclaimers from Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam that China has no such intentions are meaningless. She was appointed by Beijing and takes her orders accordingly. She is insisting on moving ahead with the law despite the mass protests because China has demanded it. Her job, and perhaps her own future freedom, would be jeopardized if she dared to resist.

The new law is itself a violation of China’s promise to Hong Kong that it could continue to control its legal system for 50 years after its handover from the British in 1997. As these columns wrote in 1984 after Margaret Thatcher struck her deal with Deng Xiaoping, “the essence of the [joint] declaration is that five million largely free people will soon have their futures determined by a totalitarian government not known for tolerance or stability.” We urged Britain to amend its Nationality Act to admit to England all Hong Kongers who wanted to leave.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/13/tory-leadership-race-news-vote-conservative-election-brexit/

Rivals are hoping the favourite will implode

Call it the Devon Loch strategy. With Boris Johnson enjoying a seemingly unassailable lead, having won 114 votes in the first round of ballots in the leadership contest to decide our next Prime Minister, his remaining rivals have only one hope: that he will fall, in spectacular fashion, at the final hurdle.

Devon Loch was the racehorse, owned by the Queen Mother, who took a commanding lead in the 1957 Grand National, only to inexplicably tumble to the ground 40 yards from the winning post.

His Blonde Ambition tour now formally underway following –  off the back of a low-key launch designed to show he can do sensible, the former foreign secretary also appears to have a clear run.

Not only does he have twice as many declared backers among MPs as any contestant, he is wildly popular among the membership and a new poll shows that were he to be Prime Minister, the Conservatives would be on course for a thumping 140-seat majority.

So the latest strategy among his rivals is to seek to become the candidate still there in the final round, when the two contestants chosen by Conservative MPs are put forward to the membership, and then cross fingers, legs and toes that Mr Johnson will mess up.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/13/hong-kong-protesters-attack-britains-response-erosion-rights/

Hong Kong demonstrators are calling on the UK to voice stronger opposition against the controversial extradition that triggered mass protests and rare scenes of violence.

On the day after hundreds of thousands took to the streets to block parliament from debating the proposed laws, some protesters turned their ire to the city’s former colonial rulers.

“Is Britain going to honour its promise to the Hong Kong people that our way of life will not be threatened after they handed us over to the Chinese?” Jessica Yeung, 50, a university professor on a hunger strike by the city’s main government building, told The Telegraph.

“Britain told us to trust them, so we trusted them,” she said, as rows of riot police watched a few metres away. But the UK “has let us down terribly”.

Protesters surrounded the Hong Kong parliament on Wednesday demanding city leaders scrap a plan to send individuals to face trial in mainland China’s murky legal system, where the ruling Communist Party controls the courts.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14358/palestinian-christians-persecution

“Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA’s image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule…. That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives.” — Dr. Edy Cohen, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Considered another way, the bread and butter of the PA and its supporters, media and others, seems to be to portray the Palestinians as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative could be jeopardized if the international community learned that Palestinians themselves were persecuting fellow Palestinians — solely on account of religion.

“Far more important to the Palestinian Authority than arresting those who assault Christian sites is keeping such incidents out of the mainstream media. And they are very successful in this regard. Indeed, only a handful of smaller local outlets bothered to report on these latest break-ins. The mainstream international media ignored them altogether.” — Dr. Edy Cohen, Israel Today.

As Justus Reid Weiner, a lawyer and scholar well-acquainted with the region explains, “The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs… In a society where Arab Christians have no voice and no protection it is no surprise that they are leaving.”

At a time when Christians throughout the Muslim world are suffering from a variety of persecution, the plight of Palestinian Christians is seldom heard.

It exists. Open Doors, a human rights group that follows the persecution of Christians, notes that Palestinian Christians suffer from a “high” level of persecution, the source of which is, in its words, “Islamic Oppression”:

“Those who convert to Christianity from Islam, however, face the worst Christian persecution and it is difficult for them to safely participate in existing churches. In the West Bank they are threatened and put under great pressure, in Gaza their situation is so dangerous that they live their Christian faith in utmost secrecy….The influence of radical Islamic ideology is rising, and historical churches have to be diplomatic in their approach towards Muslims.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14368/refugees-turkey-unhcr

Sirwan Mansouri is an Iranian Kurdish journalist based in the Middle East.

Turkey, which is located between the Middle East and Europe, was one of the first countries to establish a UNHCR regional office in 1960, and was given economic incentives to do so. Every year after that, the Turkish government received a large budget with which to provide aid to refugees.

The UNHCR, the organization that is supposed to advocate for the rights of refugees, has done the opposite. It has placed their care in the hands of an indifferent and hostile Turkey, which they leave to its own terrible devices.

Perhaps the UN has washed its hands of the misery of refugees in Turkey — who have become virtual slaves — but the rest of the international community must hold Ankara accountable for its inexcusable treatment of people who escaped danger in their countries of origin, only to be abused by the authorities that vowed — and took money — to protect and resettle them.

Over the past half century, the Geneva-based United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has created and managed mechanisms to protect people whose lives are in danger at the hands of repressive regimes by providing them with political asylum in other countries. The war-torn Middle East has been home to the highest number of such asylum-seekers.

Turkey, which is located between the Middle East and Europe, was one of the first countries to establish a UNHCR regional office in 1960, and was given economic incentives to do so. Every year after that, the Turkish government received a large budget with which to provide aid to refugees.

With an increase in cuts to UN refugee budgets, Turkey was able to provide even less money to asylum-seekers under its auspices. When the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, a huge number of refugees flowed into Turkey from Syria and Iraq. Initially, Turkey seems to have believed that this situation could be financially lucrative, as the UN would have to increase its refugee budget for Ankara. This is not what happened, however. In fact, UN assistance to Turkish mediators, such as the Human Resources Development Fund (UNHCR) and the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (SGDD-ASAM), was even severely reduced, and in 2018, it was cut off completely.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273979/germany-vs-populist-wave-bruce-bawer

When I was walking around Munich this weekend, it occurred to me that one reason why Germans have such a long-lasting international reputation for being brainy and scholarly and stuff is that all those hours they spend standing at street corners waiting for lights to change give them plenty of time to think. Ever since the first time I set foot in this country, several decades ago now, I’ve been stunned by the willingness of these people – in every city, and of whatever age or social station – to crowd together on curbs, with no moving vehicle in sight for half a mile in either direction, unwilling to hurry across even the narrowest of thoroughfares until a green signal gives them permission to move. My first encounter with this cultural practice was especially striking because I was from America, where individual freedom is taken seriously and where it is hard to quash the impulse to violate trivial regulations if they seem to impinge unnecessarily on one’s freedom of movement and are contrary to one’s personal judgment and/or to simple common sense.

Consider, moreover, that I come from New York, where, as they say, traffic lights are only suggestions. 

This whole German standing-at-lights business is, of course, all about obedience – about a fondness, in fact a deep-seated, inborn, and well-nigh ineradicable need, for exceedingly strict order, even in the most meaningless matters, enforced by very strong authority. That, plus an unshakable readiness to obey that authority beyond the point of rationality, in defiance of one’s own reasoning powers, and without ever giving an instant’s thought to the possible illegitimacy, imprudence, or immorality of that authority. It’s this rage for order that explains the insane level of overregulation practiced by the EU – which is, when you come right down to it, a German operation. The other day somebody said that one of the regulations the EU is currently working on is a rule setting the proper lengths for candle wicks. Only a bureaucracy run by Germans could come up with such things. 

Americans love freedom. But to Germans – at least Germans with a traditional German temperament –freedom looks terrifyingly like chaos.

That’s what I was reflecting on as I waited at one Munich street light after another on this first weekend after the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day – and the first weekend, too, after the announcement of the winners of the latest European Parliament elections. If not for the German fetish for authority, Americans of my parents’ generation wouldn’t have been put through so many (shall we say) inconveniences during the first half of the 1940s, and D-Day would never have had to happen, and those Normandy beaches would still have French names.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/reality-of-swedens-migration-problem/

Readers may recall a kerfuffle in February 2017, which now seems like the long, distant past. It revolved around President Trump riffing on the question of migration in front of a rally of his supporters:

You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.

As it happens, nothing had particularly happened the night before in Sweden itself. Rather, the president appeared to be referring to a segment he had seen on Fox News the previous evening, in which a journalist reported on the social and criminal problems that Sweden had been having as a result of the unchecked migration that peaked in 2015.

But such is the tenor of the times that the dominant response to the President’s statement was to ridicule it, especially by highlighting what a nirvana Sweden allegedly is. In other words, much of the political and media class in America and around the world decided to take part in covering up the problems which sudden non-European migration had brought to Sweden. In their desire to lampoon Trump they ended up colluding in a falsehood.

Just how false can once again be seen from the most recent work from Paulina Neuding, one of the most indispensable journalists not just in Europe but anywhere else. In recent years Neuding has, among other things, been keeping a tally of “explosions” in Sweden. Not metaphorical ones, but actual ones. So strangely self-censoring is the Swedish press that when explosives are used (including grenade attacks, among other hitherto un-Swedish activities) they are either ignored or reported merely as “explosions.”  Some of these do turn out to be accidents, but a great many do not, and the unwillingness of most of the media (local and international) to look into these events is one of those things that I predict historians will look back at and just whistle.

https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-sky-high-stakes-in-hong-kong/

In Hong Kong’s huge protest over a proposed law that would allow extradition from the territory to mainland China, there is far more at stake than “confidence” in the integrity of Hong Kong’s legal system, or the health of Hong Kong’s economy — important though those both are. The real showdown going on in Hong Kong has long been between despotism and democracy, between tyranny and the Free World. And whether we, the free people of America, and our allies, choose to think of it this way or not, the reality is that the showdown now taking place in Hong Kong will shape our future as well.

For two reasons, the people of Hong Kong — in their efforts to stop this ruinous extradition law — deserve the strongest support we can muster. One reason is quite simply that it is the right thing to do, though in international politics that is often a backseat priority. The other reason– perhaps more compelling to those inclined to think of Hong Kong as a faraway foreign place and none of our business — is that it is a high-risk precedent for the Free World to abandon its own. It invites aggression by the likes of China (and Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.) against us and our allies. Which is what it will boil down to, if the U.S., the U.K. and other democratic powers do not find some way to buttress the demands of Hong Kong’s demonstrators. It is vital that Washington persuade Beijing and its satrap in Hong Kong, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, that it would be wise to scrap this proposed law, and moronic –or at least astoundingly expensive — to push it through.

Please, make no mistake. Officially Hong Kong these days may be a “Special Autonomous Region” of the “People’s Republic” of China, destined under treaty to fall entirely under Beijing’s jackboot in 2047. But in spirit, in character, in history, in the inheritance of British rule of law, and for another full 28 years according to China’s promise of “One Country, Two Systems,” Hong Kong is one of our own, still part of the Free World. If we do not stand up for its people, China’s rulers will all too likely read that abandonment as one more sign of Western weakness, one more invitation to commit the next act of aggression.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/12/president-xis-strongman-tactics-have-severely-backfired-hong/

Hong Kong’s reunification with the mainland looks increasingly problematic

This week’s scenes from Hong Kong are eerily reminiscent of another battle for Chinese democracy, one that took place just 30 years ago in Beijing. While it’s true that the clashes between Hong Kong’s protesters and the Hong Kong police have been nowhere as violent as that dished out by the People’s Liberation Army that warm June evening in 1989, the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against the crowds are a troubling sign.

From one perspective, this is just a battle between the Hong Kong government and its people over an extradition law, which might make it possible for people in the city to be extradited to the mainland. 

Seen from another perspective, however, it’s a single battle in the war between closed, authoritarian states and open, democratic ones – a conflict between those who believe that a single party should be the arbiter of law, of social taste, of economic life, of education, and even, of thought – and those who believe that it is down to the individual to decide on much of this, and that dignity and happiness lay in the latter – not the former.

As one Hong Kong-watcher wrote this week, “It’s not easy to turn a million prosperous people into political dissidents. But that’s what China might have pulled off in Hong Kong.” Given the fact that Hong Kong’s approval rates for Chinese rule in 1998 were as high as 60 per cent, it is astonishing to think how Beijing has mismanaged the former British colony.

On the 20th anniversary of the handover, just two years ago, less than 3.1 per cent of Hong Kong youth identified as Chinese, while a University of Hong Kong poll found that less than 40 per cent of the city’s residents were satisfied with Chinese rule. It is astonishing, and tragic.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-extradition/hong-kong-police-fire-rubber-bullets-as-extradition-bill-protests-turn-to-chaos-idUSKCN1TC1WR

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators who threw plastic bottles on Wednesday as protests against an extradition bill that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial descended into violent chaos.

Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered peacefully outside the Chinese-ruled city’s legislature before tempers flared, some charging police with umbrellas.

Police warned them back, saying: “We will use force.”

Ambulances sped toward the protest area as panic spread through the crowd, with many people trying to flee the stinging tear gas, according to a Reuters witness. More than 10 people were wounded in the clashes, Cable TV reported.

Police used pepper spray, tear gas and batons to force the crowds back. Some shops put up their shutters at the nearby IFC, one of Hong Kong’s tallest buildings.

Civil Human Rights Front, which organized a protest on Sunday that it estimated saw more than a million people take to the streets in protest against the extradition bill, accused police of using unnecessary violence.