China and Russia… we had power, we had respect… then along came Biden.
Democracy in Hong Kong has been eliminated. It was inevitable once it returned to the hands of the Chinese Communists in 1997.
Hong Kong Pro-Democracy News site closes after raid
The outlet was one of the last remaining openly critical voices in Hong Kong following the shuttering of the Apple Daily newspaper, which closed after its publisher, Jimmy Lai, and top editors were arrested and its assets frozen.
Police raided Stand News’ office earlier in the day after arresting the six, including popular singer and activist Denise Ho, a former board member, on charges of conspiracy to publish a seditious publication.
Hong Kong Court Denies Bail
In the latest move to crack down on pro-democracy institutions, roughly 200 police officers raided the online publication Wednesday and froze its assets.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam defended the Stand News raid, and told reporters that “inciting other people…could not be condoned under the guise of news reporting.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the move and said, “Journalism is not sedition.”
“A confident government that is unafraid of the truth embraces a free press,” he added.
NOTE: Shall we discuss those still behind bars for being at the wrong place at the wrong time in January 2021? Shall we mention the way they’re rights have been violated?
China removes Tiananmen Square massacre memorials from 2 more Hong Kong universities
The removal of three Tiananmen Square massacre memorials in rapid succession comes as part of a crackdown on public dissent since China imposed new security laws over Hong Kong last year. The new laws criminalized broadly defined acts of “sedition,” “subversion,” “secession” and “terrorism,” including such acts as waving Hong Kong independence flags or shouting pro-independence slogans.
NOTE: Many US politicians and their minions have done something very similar in the removal of memorials within the United States because history is inconvenient.
What’s happening in Russia? As they sit on the border of Ukraine, they issued a national standard regarding mass burial laws that go into effect in February 2022. By the way, they also ordered the liquidation of the Memorial society… more below.
Russia shuts down human rights watchdog, passes mass burial law in preparation for war
On Dec. 28, the Russian Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of the Memorial society, the oldest human rights organization in Russia.
In 2014, Russia declared the Moscow Human Rights Center of Memorial a “foreign agent.” Two years later, this designation was given to the entire organization. In a hope that it would turn the Russian public against Memorial, the government obliged it to add “foreign agent’ to its logo on all websites and printed documents. Memorial fought in the Russian courts while accumulating astronomical fines that were paid through fundraising among supporters. Last month, the Russian prosecutor general finally requested the liquidation of Memorial. That order was protested around the world, including a statement in defense of Memorial signed by two Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureates: Mikhail Gorbachev and Dmitry Muratov.
The crackdown on human rights continues.
On Dec. 27, a Russian court extended to 15 years the prison term given to historian Yuri Dmitriev. Dmitriev came to prominence by uncovering, with the help of Memorial, the mass graves of political prisoners shot by Josef Stalins’s secret police in Karelia, parts of which Russia annexed in 1940. Dmitriev had been arrested on dubious charges in 2016, acquitted in 2018, rearrested the same year, and sentenced to 3 1/2 years.
Mass Burials to come…
Last fall, while Russian prosecutors were busy suppressing information about repressions and mass burials in the Soviet Union, the Russian Federal Agency for Technical Regulations and Metrology issued a national standard on “urgent burial of corpses in peacetime and wartime.” It provided detailed blueprints for the construction of mass graves and spelled out the manpower needed to bury “1,000 dead within 3 days.” The new law goes into effect on Feb. 1, raising questions about its relation to the amassing of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine.
