It's so funny to see this after all the protests on US campuses just got crashed by police forces.
Now, the salient question: were they charged and convicted with subversion, treason, or anything like a felony? Because that's what happen in HK.
If US kids trespassed, vandalized, assaulted the police well the US doesn't put up with either. And they are charged commensurately.
What I can tell you is the police and political class are not threatened by saying British, slavery or any other touch word from our past. You won't get a subversion conviction for that.
> Carr obtained indictments against 61 people, alleging violations of the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, over ongoing efforts to halt construction of Cop City. Indicted activists, including a protest observer, face steep penalties of up to 20 years in prison. Three bail fund organizers face additional money laundering charges, and five people also face state domestic terrorism charges. [0]
Is it ok because the prosecutor isn’t seeking life sentences? Do you contend that the activists are being treated fairly as one expects in a democratic society that values rule of law? Is it acceptable because America is 66% less repressive than China and against a narrower range of views (like socialism/communism, see Debs et al)? Have you really even interrogated your positions?
[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/rico-and-domestic-terr...
Okay and comparable are planets part. The prosecutor is prosecuting. They aren’t a general opening machine gun fire at the protesters. The false equivalence is beyond ridiculous.
To find an American analog to the Tiananmen massacre, you have to go back to when we were fighting Indians. (The Ludlow massacre, in 1914, comes close in kind but not scale [1].)
Not yet. But it’s obtuse bordering on disingenuous to claim this isn’t on the table, given rhetoric from politicians (current and former). Or is eliminationist rhetoric and political repression okay as long as it isn’t done the way China does it?
Also, are you familiar what how the anti-Cop City protest movement has been treated in Georgia?
Honestly I want to know if you’re speaking from ignorance or malice.
Naïve comparison.
The CCP declared martial law. It had its troops, not police, indiscriminately fire machine guns into protesters and bystanders alike while other units drove tanks over crowds of kids [1]. Thousands died, thousands more were disappeared, and to this day the government is so scared it will jail anyone who talks about it.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protes...
Even the PLA was really provincial. They first brought in local garrisons made up of Beijingers who sympathized with the protesters and the beijingers who rioted after the army came in. They had to bring in remote garrisons to actually shoot people.
China made lots of mistakes and fixed them in many ways:
* the PAP was greatly expanded to provide something between police and the PLA for dealing with protests.
* They stopped garrisoning PLA troops in their hometowns.
* political obedience to the party was given priority over merit in PLA promotions.
Everything else is about right. They don’t want to talk about it. Even the middle school students involved are all 50 now, so it’s disappearing from memory. Also, it stopped a period of non-economic liberalization that was going on in the 80s, and stunted much liberalization afterwards.
Beijing had experience with riot control in Tibet [1]. One month prior to Tiananmen, they put down protests in Urumqi [2].
Agree that the police were unprepared. But the decision to violently suppress was made by the CCP’s top leadership. This wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate massacre of protesting children.
> China made lots of mistakes and fixed them in many ways
Beijing switched from open to covert killing. Were China party to the ICC or ICJ, Xi would be open to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in Tibet and Xinjiang/East Turkestan [3]. The continued fear and repression in Hong Kong is noteworthy not because it’s unstable, but because it’s still visible.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_and_uprisings_in_Ti...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_unrest
[3] https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/un-reports-...