geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: berserkfan on Wed, 20 January 2016, 21:37:29
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/opinion/hong-kongs-missing-booksellers.html
I've been very concerned about the Hong Kong missing booksellers for many months by now, and now it finally makes the NYTimes as well.
Time to think a bit about this.
Basically for those who do not want to read, I'll summarize. Hong Kong is supposed to have its own legal system and is legally distinct from China under the one nation, two systems agreement.
Hong Kong citizens who are resident in Hong Kong (and some are citizens of Western nations) have been going missing. They are non violent, and have never been accused of violence or treason by China. They are not terrorists or even political dissidents. They have not been accused of taking part in demonstrations or other anti-China activity. They are just working in the trade of publishing political books.
(Note that they are not accused of being anti China or trying to encourage terrorism in China. The books they publish don't reveal the location of China's nuclear assets or other overly sensitive information. It's more like political gossip of a personal nature against China's current Emperor Xi Jinping. So there has been no official request or diplomatic pressure from the Chinese government. There is nothing going through the Chinese legal system, no judicial finding in China followed by a request for extradition to the Hong Kong authorities)
There is strong suspicion that these booksellers have been abducted by Chinese agents in Hong Kong, and packed off to black jails in China. Due to the murky and unaccountable nature of these abductions, it is highly likely that these booksellers will never be seen alive again, or at least as long as Xi Jinping remains influential. Which, in China, is usually until he dies. Of course some may also have been murdered, but no body has been found.
Naturally Hong Kongers are very upset and worried about China interfering in their democracy. More importantly, it could snowball. In future anyone who does things that the Chinese government does not like - eg the students who led protests against Chinese interference last year - could also mysteriously disappear.
So this has spread fear and terror.
And it works very much like how terrorism works. It utilizes violence or the threat of violence and spreads disproportionate fear throughout a population for political purposes. There is no official law against criticizing Xi Jinping, and even the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of speech. But now no one will dare publish books deemed critical of Xi in Hong Kong.
Can this spread? Definitely. Because the local Hong Kong authorities are deemed to be Beijing stooges, in future critics may well just relocate to Chinese communities in Vancouver, or Sydney, or New York, and sell books online. So what next? Assassinations by Chinese agents in the USA?
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It's terrorism against if you have the biggest fist..
It's just a fact of life when you're the lesser.. That's the way of the world, sigh... it's always been awful..
Fighting china is hopeless..
Just like when the CIA decides to off you, that's that..
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Regardless of whether this is or is not a legitimate scenario to call terrorism, at least in North America, the word is overused and abused so often it's lost its meaning to me. The amount of times I hear it by politicians to fear monger and advance their political agenda and other times as codified racism each week makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Not trying to bash OP in any way, it just reminded me of this and I feel it's worth mentioning. That is all.