
Hong Kong activists wanted by police gain protection in Germany - VanPossum
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/world/asia/hong-kong-china-germany-activists.html
======
Iv
“If the German government thinks that the Hong Kong judiciary is independent,
they would not grant me refugee status,”

I just want to point out that refugee status is given on a case by case basis.
Even with an independent judiciary, if your laws oppress some people, refugee
status can be obtained. Europe has accepted refugees from USA during McCarty's
era.

Accepting a refugee from another nation does have diplomatic meaning but is
does not automatically mean that they will dismiss each other judgements
automatically.

~~~
Tomte
And, preposterously, America has given political asylum to German home-
schoolers a few years ago.

~~~
mieseratte
> And, preposterously, America has given political asylum to German home-
> schoolers a few years ago.

Why preposterously?

~~~
FabHK
Because it is preposterous to consider the German "Schulpflicht" (ie, the
obligation that children visit a public^W school) religious or political
persecution.

You can teach your children whatever weird shit you want. What you cannot do
(in Germany) is take them out of school, where they will _also_ be taught what
everyone else is taught, including sex-ed, history, comparative religion, etc.

EDIT: correction, it's not an obligation to visit a public school, it's an
obligation to visit a permissible school (there are private ones, but
homeschooling does not constitute a permissible school).

~~~
mieseratte
In America we seem to have the opposite view. The government doesn’t get to
make that call.

I could see how one could reasonably view this as some sort of political or
religious refugee, depending on context. They are, at the end of the day,
facing punishment for a practice a typical American would find acceptable if
not a little strange.

~~~
Tomte
At that point you have expanded the meaning of "persecution" to nonsense.

Sure, we could accept Americans as "politically persecuted", because highways
in America have speed limits. But we choose not to.

At some point you need to accept that not every difference in laws is
persecution. That not every difference in law means that the other one is
doing something wrong.

Alas, the US Supreme Court feels similarly when its conservative wing always
dismisses all analogies and examples abroad as obviously uninteresting. I
think "our SCOTUS" gets this balance right, or at least more right, when it
differentiates between "would not constitutional in Germany, but is a valid
viewpoint" and "would not be constitutional, and is so far beyond the pale
that there cannot be an accomodation".

An extradition case starring an American from some years ago is a prime
example for this differentiation, in my opinion (anyone interested in reading
a summary?).

------
adminu
Assuming Hong Kong is indeed tightening its grip on the people and accepting
more influence from Beijing, I wonder if that was a smart move. I mean, Hong
Kong is a cash cow for China and an innovation driver. It foots on lots of
trade and internationals coming in. Why would you fiddle with that and
threaten making Hong Kong less desirable to foreigners?

~~~
syntaxing
I think the brain drain from HK to China is much more prevalent than people
know these past five years. China have been doing various "assimilation"
techniques since the Qin Dynasty. I feel like China has been pretty aggressive
with their "wash generation" (direct translation). Bathe the citizens in
decent wealth and comfort while increasing the immigration rate from Mainlad
China. Look at the new train and bridge to Shen Zhen that's part of the new
government intiative to make Shen Zhen the world SV. There's new
entrepreneur/startup incubator thats less than a hour travel from HK. This
incubator is expected to provide tax break, living and office space, and small
stipend to live for any young entrepreneur and HK citizens are qualified to
apply. For the better or the worse, it's only a matter of a couple decades
where HK today will cease to exist at this rate.

~~~
FabHK
> it's only a matter of a couple decades where HK today will cease to exist

Well, at most three decades, to be precise, when in 2047 it will fully revert
to China under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and lose its status as a
Special Administrative Region.

~~~
chibg10
My understanding is that HK future after 2047 is left unclear under the Sino-
British Joint Declaration. Not that it's specified to be annexed to the
mainland.

Granted, in practice it's hard to see any other outcome from today's lens. But
my observation is that there tends to be a lot of this fact-mangling when it
comes to territories PRC likes to claim that suspiciously seems to nearly
always coincide with the PRC's interests, and I would prefer public discourse
at least has the legal facts straight now and when the time comes.

~~~
FabHK
First time I hear that interpretation, but a quick skimming of the documents
suggests that you might be right. Worth investigating.

------
ngcc_hk
The extradition law is what any foreigner shall be worried about.

But if you concern about hongkinger, he is one of the start. Not just the
usual as they are the new bred of young who think more about hk as home. It is
sad they have to run. Sigh.

------
areoform
These activists are fighting against unfathomable odds. Beijing is willing to
use conventional and unconventional tactics with ruthless eagerness to win.
While most totalitarian state share this mentality, Beijing is an entirely
different kettle of fish, They aren’t just a totalitarian state; they're a
_devious_ totalitarian state.

There is no better evidence of Beijing’s _creativity_ than the Chinese
takeover of Hong Kong. Unlike the mainland, Hong Kong is inhabited by people
who are used to being free. The party’s insiders quickly realized that they
couldn’t bring the Hong Kong population to heel with shock and awe. Worried
about a popular uprising, they forged deals with the triads to maintain
control of Hong Kong with a quid pro quo involving Shenzhen and access to the
Chinese market;

> Easily, it turns out. Of all of the treacherous aspects of Hong Kong's
> reunification with China, the most treacherous--and the least noticed--is
> that it will seal what amounts to a cooperation pact between the triad
> societies and the Communist Party. This dreadful alliance, of the world's
> largest criminal underground and the world's last great totalitarian power,
> has received surprisingly little attention in this country, even though the
> U.S. Justice Department has identified triad racketeering as a significant
> global threat. Even more ominously, this alliance is not accidental. It was
> part of Deng Xiaoping's reunification plan for Hong Kong from the very
> beginning, and dates from the early 1980s, when China and Britain were
> negotiating the return of Hong Kong to the mainland in 1997.

> We know this because this past May, Wong Man-fong, the former deputy
> secretary-general of Xinhua, China's news agency in Hong Kong (which
> reputedly acts as a de facto embassy), admitted it during a forum at Hong
> Kong's Baptist University. Wong said that in the early 1980s, at Beijing's
> behest, he "befriended" Hong Kong's triad bosses and made them an offer they
> could not refuse: China would turn a blind eye to their illegal activities
> if they would promise to keep peace after the handover. "I told them that,
> if they did not disrupt Hong Kong's stability, we would not stop them from
> making money," Wong said. No one knows why Wong made this astounding
> disclosure about China's secret dealings with crime bosses, but there is
> even more to the story than he acknowledged...

\- [https://newrepublic.com/article/90738/partners-in-
crime](https://newrepublic.com/article/90738/partners-in-crime)

The Chinese Communist Party and the triads are still in bed with one another
and share the mutual passion of oppressing others;

> On Feb. 26, 2014, Kevin Lau, the former editor in chief of the Ming Pao
> daily and a vocal critic of Beijing, was stabbed in the back by two men who
> claimed they each had been paid $100,000 Hong Kong dollars to “teach Lau a
> lesson.”

> Later that same year, dozens of masked men physically attacked Occupy
> Central members and pro-democracy activists and tore down their tents.
> According to Hong Kong police, as many as 200 gang members from two major
> triad groups had “infiltrated the protest camps, possibly in order to stir
> up violence that would discredit demonstrators.”

> Although many suspected who was behind the repression — nobody else had the
> same motivation to act — the attacks were hard to directly trace back to
> Beijing. But the circumstantial evidence points strongly in the mainland’s
> direction. Though the former colony was now under Chinese control, the CCP
> still needed to exercise some restraint in the use of force against elements
> in Hong Kong it deemed undesirable. Beijing knew full well that unleashing
> the People’s Liberation Army or riot police would be too direct an
> intervention into the affairs of a region that, technically, had retained
> the right to run its own affairs. Direct assault by the state apparatus
> would have been counterproductive and likely would have alienated a larger
> number of Hong Kong residents. Pro-Beijing thugs were easily manipulated,
> had no compunction in using force, and, more importantly, offered plausible
> deniability.

\- [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/18/nice-democracy-youve-
go...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/18/nice-democracy-youve-got-there-be-
a-shame-if-something-happened-to-it/)

There are rumors that a large stake in Deng's pet project, Shenzhen, was given
over to the triads in exchange for their cooperation in Hong Kong. Between
this, Chinese social experiments and the deep tech feel of the city, Shenzhen
seems to be something straight out of a Gibson-esque cyberpunk dystopia with a
healthy helping of shadowy violence on top.

The odds are against those who fight this power. They deserve and need every
bit of help that they can get. Back in the 80s, after the Tiananmen Square
massacre, the Hong Kong community worked with the CIA, a few smugglers and
gangs and MI6 to smuggle wanted dissidents out of China to freedom.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird)
Maybe we need more of the same?

