It’s standard procedure here to accuse protesters here of using homemade pepper spray, urine-filled super-soakers, acid-filled balloons, cement-filled milkshakes, wrist rockets, Molotovs, and trying to get the police to beat you, in order to justify crackdowns on protesters. It’s not true in America. Why assume similar stories are true in Hong Kong?
Same goes for claiming that the government has “killed ZERO protesters.” It’s usually but not always true here in America, Seattle is one case where it wasn’t true. Why assume similar stories are true in Hong Kong?
“Getting the police to attack you” is non-violence 101; it was MLK’s preferred tactic.
Unfortunately, it’s also CIA regime change op 101.
My point here is not to claim that the Chinese government are all sweetness and light, or that Chinese cops do not share the flaws of cops worldwide.
My point here is to highlight the extreme hypocrisy and double standards in play, and the way in which human rights discourse in the Western media is manipulated in the service of imperial goals.
If HK-style protests had been happening in the USA, the American cops would have been calling in airstrikes months ago. How do you think the police in St Louis would respond if protesters spent months attacking them with molotovs and hunting bows? At the end of the St Louis uprising, BLM protesters were reduced to standing silent and motionless on the sidewalks in an attempt to avoid giving the police any excuse to attack; they still got their heads cracked.
By global (and American) standards, the police response in HK has been unusually restrained…much to the disappointment of the US State Department. The Chinese authorities are very obviously straining to avoid giving the Western media the propaganda coup that they’re aiming for.
