Samuel Bickett’s NY Post piece (here) on conditions in Hong Kong prison’s doesn’t go down well with the city’s Corrections boss, who says it is ‘completely false, baseless and malicious defamation’…
In his letter, Wong [Kwok-hing] stated the department is committed to ensuring a safe, humane and healthy custodial environment while providing appropriate rehabilitation programs to help offenders reform. He said allegations of widespread abuse, medical negligence or poor living conditions in correctional institutions were entirely unfounded.
Wong emphasized that Hong Kong has no so-called “political prisoners” and all persons in custody are treated equally without discrimination based on background, political views or nature of offenses. The department strictly adheres to fairness and professionalism in all operations, with any illegal acts by persons in custody or staff dealt with seriously and referred to law enforcement agencies for investigation.
…Wong explained that in recent years, some radical offenders convicted of serious crimes have entered correctional institutions, many influenced by extremist ideologies or misconceptions. To address their rehabilitation needs, the department launched the “PATH” program to help persons in custody understand Chinese history and culture, develop national identity, rebuild positive values and restart their lives. All persons in custody may participate voluntarily, and the department condemns any demonization of rehabilitation programs as “indoctrination.”
No angry government press release about the Committee for Freedom in HK Foundation report itself. But there is one on the European Commission’s ‘so-called’ annual report on Hong Kong, which apparently disputes every point in detail…
“As regards the interim injunction relating to a song granted by the Court of Appeal, the HKSAR Government reiterates that the interim injunction covers four types of specified criminal acts in relation to the concerned song. The injunction pursues the legitimate aim of safeguarding national security and is necessary, reasonable, legitimate, proportionate and consistent with the requirements of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights. Internationally, many jurisdictions also have legal mechanisms in place to prohibit the dissemination of information that is illegal, offensive, incites violence, incites hatred or harms the public interest. For example, the EU’s Digital Services Act stipulates that upon the receipt of an order to act against a specific item(s) of illegal content, providers of intermediary services shall inform the authority of any effect given to the order without undue delay ; it also requires providers of hosting services to put mechanisms in place to combat illegal contents and respond to notices received in a timely manner, including removing and disabling access to the relevant content. The unreasonable criticisms made by the EU against the legitimate legal actions taken by the HKSAR Government shows clearly the double standards held.
An SCMP op-ed complains that the West deliberately ignores the Nanjing massacre…
[The reason] Chinese scholar Dai Jinhua has observed, lies in Western discourse itself.
To Western scholars, the Nanking massacre was just “not technically sophisticated”, she said. “It’s not special, not surprising, not worth writing about, while Auschwitz represents that kind of efficiency, order, modern technology that is truly terrifying. And Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where a single bomb destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives – that’s worth writing about.”
Every country focuses on its own World War II experiences. So, where Europe is concerned, the UK and US focus on D Day as the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler, while overlooking the fact that 90% of the soldiers killed fighting the Germans were Soviets on the Eastern front. Similarly, people in Manila, Singapore, Borneo and Burma no doubt remember the Japanese massacres of civilians in those places, which many of us probably know little about. When did we last hear Chinese academics or politicians mention those Nanjing-type slaughters in Southeast Asia? If you don’t hear Southeast Asians mention them that much, it’s probably because they do not use those atrocities to stir up hatred of present-day Japan.
A Brookings Institute essay on Beijing’s World War II narrative…
Russia uses a generous interpretation of the Soviet role in defeating fascism to bolster the assertion that it is entitled to a say in NATO and European Union expansion.
…The PRC has jumped onto this “memory war” wagon with its increasing attention to the commemoration of the victory over Japan that occurred not merely in the Pacific Theater but also in the land war fought in China proper.
…The implications of … reinterpretations [of diplomatic history] are far-reaching. Recentering Cairo and Potsdam as legitimate international agreements bolsters the PRC’s justification for its sovereign control of Taiwan [and] a springboard for broader discussion in China of “international order.”
Modern-day officially sanctioned Chinese ‘discourse’ sidesteps the fact that the PRC did not even exist during World War II, and that China’s military effort was largely marshalled by the KMT-run ROC. And (as with the USSR and the UK), the ROC depended on one key contribution that probably did more than anything else to defeat Germany and Japan: the USA’s astounding industrial mobilization, which produced, among much else, 300,000 aircraft in a roughly three-year period.
It was the CCP wot won it.
The Yanks just did the mopping up after us.
They were lucky we Chinese invented the A-bomb.
And air conditioning, too.
“ the USA’s astounding industrial mobilization, which produced, among much else, 300,000 aircraft in a roughly three-year period. ”
I hope US is still actually capable of doing that, particularly being able to pump out drones as fast as PRC can.
While there are a lot of question marks on China’s military capabilities, I think it is likely extremely capable of industrial mobilisation and can pump out enough drones to blot out the sky.
I’ve always wondered about how Donald Tsang was treated during his stay in prison.
Sure, he would have probably been segregated for certain things from the rest of the population, but was he in a standard cell?
Did he have exactly the same facilities, food, access to information and visitors as everyone else?
Or as a former CE did he recieve slightly different treatement?
I never heard any discussion of this, but I find it hard to imagine that he was in with everyone else.
Well, they sure helped Bickett “understand Chinese history and culture, develop national identity, rebuild positive values and restart their lives.”
@Paul Lewis
I think he spent a significant part of his incarceration in a hospital bed.
@Mark Bradley
I fear you’re right.
The U.S. was woefully under-prepared for war when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. In the fullness of time and only at great cost in blood and treasure, the U.S. and its allies defeated the Axis powers and liberated hundreds of millions of people from the fascist yoke.
It is entirely foreseeable that, in a conflict with the Axis of Assholes, the U.S. and its allies would again emerge victorious, but likewise it would undoubtedly come at a very high cost.
A key variable that is often overlooked and under-reported is what new technologies are being developed by the hundreds of billions of dollars in secret military expenditures in the U.S. defence budget each year.
It is worth reflecting upon the fact that stealth technology and highly accurate laser-guided munitions were a breathtaking when they were revealed to the world during the Gulf War in 1991. It woke up the world to how far advanced the U.S. was compared to its military adversaries.
One hopes that 35 years later, the Pentagon again has a few new game-changing tricks up its sleeve in the event of another conflict that threatens the post-World War II order and Western civilisation.
If, instead, it is Communist China that has the dominant game-changing tricks up its sleeve, then another very dark period for the world will undoubtedly ensue.