Hong Kong activists wanted by police gain protection in Germany
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I just want to point out that refugee status is given on a case by case basis. Even with an independent judiciary, if your laws oppress some people, refugee status can be obtained. Europe has accepted refugees from USA during McCarty's era.
Accepting a refugee from another nation does have diplomatic meaning but is does not automatically mean that they will dismiss each other judgements automatically.
In any case, there's a difference between political prosecution and some minor international differences of what's legal and what's not. If it were that easy to get asylum, people would probably prefer it to participating in the Green Card Lottery or H1B Visa process.
Freedom of speech also isn't the only category of "political" crimes. Many Germans consider the (partial) lack of speed limits as a defining characteristic of freedom, yet Americans can't get asylum at 60mph just because of it. On a more serious note, there are a great many political freedoms that some if not all European countries are better at guaranteeing than the US. Elections are administered fair and it's generally easy to vote even in poor neighbourhoods; No death penalty; Public defenders that actually have time to defend you, etc. Heck, the racial disparities in the US criminal justice system border on wilful prosecution of a minority.
Who was expelled from the EU for hate speech?
At least Denmark and Austria have been planning to deport radical imams, especially when they have preached about killing Jews. Not sure about actual cases, though.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20160303/denmark-eyes-deportation-of...
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/8/17442240/austria-closing-mosque...
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/01/262482/denmark-depo...
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Mansour#Udsendelse_af_Danm...
I suspect the GP had EU far right dudes in mind, but most such 'hate speech' is often basically "slander and/or harassment that happens to be also racist" and typically ends up with a fine: hardly 'persecution'. And even if we go from "all the people" to just "a handful of ideologues": why would the US say no to ISIS but yes to Nazis?
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/france-to-expel-pro-wife-bea...
Why preposterously?
You can teach your children whatever weird shit you want. What you cannot do (in Germany) is take them out of school, where they will also be taught what everyone else is taught, including sex-ed, history, comparative religion, etc.
EDIT: correction, it's not an obligation to visit a public school, it's an obligation to visit a permissible school (there are private ones, but homeschooling does not constitute a permissible school).
I could see how one could reasonably view this as some sort of political or religious refugee, depending on context. They are, at the end of the day, facing punishment for a practice a typical American would find acceptable if not a little strange.
Sure, we could accept Americans as "politically persecuted", because highways in America have speed limits. But we choose not to.
At some point you need to accept that not every difference in laws is persecution. That not every difference in law means that the other one is doing something wrong.
Alas, the US Supreme Court feels similarly when its conservative wing always dismisses all analogies and examples abroad as obviously uninteresting. I think "our SCOTUS" gets this balance right, or at least more right, when it differentiates between "would not constitutional in Germany, but is a valid viewpoint" and "would not be constitutional, and is so far beyond the pale that there cannot be an accomodation".
An extradition case starring an American from some years ago is a prime example for this differentiation, in my opinion (anyone interested in reading a summary?).
Germany ranks highly in measures like the World Index of Moral Freedom, the Freedom in the World rankings, and the Freedom of the Press report. If Germany's citizens are entitled to asylum, is there any country whose citizens aren't?
Someone wants to educate their children at home, in Germany that's not ok. In the US it is, so in the US they get some level of asylum.
These folks aren't some terrorists, they're not hurting anyone... seems like a situation where there are two different approaches, not some serious crime.
It also is a case by case basis so who knows if it holds up in court for long.
Edit: Looks like they lost the asylum part of their bid:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/home-schooling-german-family-allow...
Without branding Germany a regime persecuting innocent people.
The asylum process basically means just that. Let them immigrate "normally", and everything is fine.
I think it depends on what you mean by "process" everyone gets some hearings and etc, that is the process.
That doesn't mean they've been accepted or IMO anything about Germany. You have to have a "process" even if the person feels that they're being persecuted because they don't like chocolate ice cream, a process doesn't mean anything about Germany.
Googling shows that a family went through the process... and lost the asylum bid.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/home-schooling-german-family-allow...
Yes, it was reversed. Eventually.
And to add, Shenzhen is where all the technology companies are.
Well, at most three decades, to be precise, when in 2047 it will fully revert to China under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and lose its status as a Special Administrative Region.
Granted, in practice it's hard to see any other outcome from today's lens. But my observation is that there tends to be a lot of this fact-mangling when it comes to territories PRC likes to claim that suspiciously seems to nearly always coincide with the PRC's interests, and I would prefer public discourse at least has the legal facts straight now and when the time comes.
If not, the wumaos are doing a good job on HN.
Because China is not as naturally unified as it likes to make out and having an example of a previously free and democratic state that still wants to agitate for freedom within your borders is intolerable to an authoritarian regime that needs to maintain control everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy
Also, the fact that china is an authoritarian communist state shows that they aren't pretending to be "naturally unified". If they were "naturally unified", they wouldn't be so authoritarian in the first place.
Also,
> ... documents recently released by the National Archives in Britain suggest that beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-began-pu...
As for your last point, so what? Nobody is claiming china is a democracy. But neither was britain. And it's laughable that "chinese pressure" is why britain didn't allow democracy in hong kong. It's a convenient excuse that doesn't change the facts.
Britain never allowed democracy in hong kong. And it's simply absurd to claim hong kong was "free" when it was a conquered colony of britain. It's one of the ironies of history. Hong kong only became "free" and "democratic" under chinese rule.
And in the final years, the "LegCo and the Urban/Regional Councils" may have been elected but they were powerless advisors. The ruler of hong kong, the governor, who had actual power was not elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Patten
Does that guy look like an "elected" and "rightful" leader of hong kong? A guy who wasn't born in hong kong and who didn't grow up in hong kong ruled hong kong by appointment, not election. It's absurd that anyone would claim hong kong was free or democratic at any point under british rule. Britain itself wasn't a democracy and it never allowed any of it's colonies, especially the non-white colonies, to become a democracy.
The truth of the matter is hong kong was never a democracy and probably will never be one. Neither the colonizing brits or the chinese were interested in hong kong being a democracy.
I always find it amusing when people try to compare the PRC with the oppressive colonial empires as if they're on the same level...
As for whether LegCo was powerless, look up the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance. It was a bill introduced not by the government but by an elected legislator, something that will never happen under the current system. That bill has been the bane of the government ever since, even after the handover.
Britain does have its deficits, but by 1997 it certainly qualified as democratic by the usual standards. So do multiple of its former colonies.
> Hong kong only became "free" and "democratic" under chinese rule.
Under the rule of the PRC? Do you really believe that?
In trade war between China and US, many food production in China relied on foreign trade. Increasing tax would cause China losing their reserve in higher rate. It is not just about Huawei, but many industry losing jobs, not enough food production for the people. The same or similar may apply to US but the difference is that China is authoritarian. If an authoritarian cannot maintain its economic growth, the government would be collapsed by revolution or a coup. They could even potentially start a war for cover up their fault by blaming foreign countries. For US, it's just a matter of losing an election.
Now what is the solution? There are still many reserve in Hong Kong. Let's start a extradition law in Hong Kong to China to take back some of the dollar from "outlawed" Hong Kong merchant. For the sake of China, Hong Kong could be a pawn for sacrifice.
But if you concern about hongkinger, he is one of the start. Not just the usual as they are the new bred of young who think more about hk as home. It is sad they have to run. Sigh.
There is no better evidence of Beijing’s creativity than the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong. Unlike the mainland, Hong Kong is inhabited by people who are used to being free. The party’s insiders quickly realized that they couldn’t bring the Hong Kong population to heel with shock and awe. Worried about a popular uprising, they forged deals with the triads to maintain control of Hong Kong with a quid pro quo involving Shenzhen and access to the Chinese market;
> Easily, it turns out. Of all of the treacherous aspects of Hong Kong's reunification with China, the most treacherous--and the least noticed--is that it will seal what amounts to a cooperation pact between the triad societies and the Communist Party. This dreadful alliance, of the world's largest criminal underground and the world's last great totalitarian power, has received surprisingly little attention in this country, even though the U.S. Justice Department has identified triad racketeering as a significant global threat. Even more ominously, this alliance is not accidental. It was part of Deng Xiaoping's reunification plan for Hong Kong from the very beginning, and dates from the early 1980s, when China and Britain were negotiating the return of Hong Kong to the mainland in 1997.
> We know this because this past May, Wong Man-fong, the former deputy secretary-general of Xinhua, China's news agency in Hong Kong (which reputedly acts as a de facto embassy), admitted it during a forum at Hong Kong's Baptist University. Wong said that in the early 1980s, at Beijing's behest, he "befriended" Hong Kong's triad bosses and made them an offer they could not refuse: China would turn a blind eye to their illegal activities if they would promise to keep peace after the handover. "I told them that, if they did not disrupt Hong Kong's stability, we would not stop them from making money," Wong said. No one knows why Wong made this astounding disclosure about China's secret dealings with crime bosses, but there is even more to the story than he acknowledged...
- https://newrepublic.com/article/90738/partners-in-crime
The Chinese Communist Party and the triads are still in bed with one another and share the mutual passion of oppressing others;
> On Feb. 26, 2014, Kevin Lau, the former editor in chief of the Ming Pao daily and a vocal critic of Beijing, was stabbed in the back by two men who claimed they each had been paid $100,000 Hong Kong dollars to “teach Lau a lesson.”
> Later that same year, dozens of masked men physically attacked Occupy Central members and pro-democracy activists and tore down their tents. According to Hong Kong police, as many as 200 gang members from two major triad groups had “infiltrated the protest camps, possibly in order to stir up violence that would discredit demonstrators.”
> Although many suspected who was behind the repression — nobody else had the same motivation to act — the attacks were hard to directly trace back to Beijing. But the circumstantial evidence points strongly in the mainland’s direction. Though the former colony was now under Chinese control, the CCP still needed to exercise some restraint in the use of force against elements in Hong Kong it deemed undesirable. Beijing knew full well that unleashing the People’s Liberation Army or riot police would be too direct an intervention into the affairs of a region that, technically, had retained the right to run its own affairs. Direct assault by the state apparatus would have been counterproductive and likely would have alienated a larger number of Hong Kong residents. Pro-Beijing thugs were easily manipulated, had no compunction in using force, and, more importantly, offered plausible deniability.
- https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/18/nice-democracy-youve-go...
There are rumors that a large stake in Deng's pet project, Shenzhen, was given over to the triads in exchange for their cooperation in Hong Kong. Between this, Chinese social experiments and the deep tech feel of the city, Shenzhen seems to be something straight out of a Gibson-esque cyberpunk dystopia with a healthy helping of shadowy violence on top.
The odds are against those who fight this power. They deserve and need every bit of help that they can get. Back in the 80s, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Hong Kong community worked with the CIA, a few smugglers and gangs and MI6 to smuggle wanted dissidents out of China to freedom. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird Maybe we need more of the same?