Dear India, Show Some Spine: Take Hong Kong for Example

India is ranked 140th/179 in the Press Freedom Index, there are cases of academics being arrested due to sociological theories that offend people, there are consistently cases in which people are arrested for social media statuses that are benign but that are minorly negative towards someone in power (and even arrests for 'liking' statuses!).

Pretty much every one of those cases is far less defensible than an indictment of Snowden would be (i.e. there is literally no ethical ground to stand on in any democratic society in these cases, whereas one can conceive of a reasonable devil's advocate argument for Snowden's case). India's recent record on free speech is pretty abysmal, unfortunately. It's a nice thought, but I don't see why they would go out of their way and stick their neck out diplomatically to protect it in Snowden's case.

Immediate edit of a typo: "less defensible" --> "more defensible"

China is doing what they're doing because they're a global superpower who is looking after their national interest. My critique is about the author mistaking what China is doing for being about freedom of speech, or the mistaken idea that what Hong Kong did had nothing to do with China.

And to be 100% fair I would say that India is very a democracy, and that's something they should be very proud of as a nation.