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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Well he did flee to Hong Kong of all places. So clearly he isn't the most learned person around.

Apparently, you're the less learned one. Hong Kong was a former property of HRH and still maintains, both culturally and politically, the civic values from their predecessors. As a matter of fact, judging from what I saw last time I was over there, one could reasonably argue that they handle civil dissent much better than us here in the states, both on the protesters' side and on the government's side.

Exactly. I also read that the gov't there is currently revamping their asylum rules and that for now anybody who applies for asylum can stay until the rules are sorted out, which may take quite a long time... I don't think he's done so, but it may be a more savvy location than you'd think.

I've lived in Hong Kong for over a decade so know it's culture. It's not that dissimilar from Singapore in its western leanings.

Hong Kong's history is irrelevant as they have an extradition treaty with the USA. Any normal person would not seek asylum in a country where this was the case.

Only on the surface is it close to Singapore. When you are a part of what political pundits have always hyped up as "the biggest threat to the USA/the next superpower", things change -- attitudes change. "Western leanings" sure, I'll give you that. But that is not equivalent to being pro-American. In fact, if pro-west meant just abiding by the majority of Western countries' attitudes, then on this matter pro-west might as well be equivalent to anti-USA. (I've lived in HK as well).

And the USA has basically an extradition treaty with every country. They are not always followed, either (granted, I am not an expert on this matter). Of course, they might extradite him, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you make it out.

USA does not have an extradition with basically every country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extraditi...

It has been widely reported just how bizarre it was to pick a country like Hong Kong given their recent cooperation with the USA.

Basically every country that he can probably go to under the conditions he made (medical), without rousing suspicion, has an extradition treaty with the USA. Certainly if he wanted to go to Afghanistan for "epilepsy treatment", it'd be weird, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_S...

Which one's good? If you really cared about the extradition treaty so much, you'd have a problem going anywhere (given his situation, and I think even for the typical tourist most countries on that list are countries you might not even ever think about visiting. Though I've admittedly visit quite a few of those, so I may be wrong on that point).

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