UK arrests journalists for supporting Palestine while decrying HK sedition verdict

As the UK government arrested two British journalists for supporting Palestine in the Israeli war, its junior minister for the Indo-Pacific issued statements decrying the conviction of two Stand News executives on sedition charges.

It was a clear case of double standards: “Do as I say and not as I do” syndrome.
Independent Syrian-British journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested as he exited his plane at London’s Heathrow airport on August 15 under the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000. One week later, British human rights activist and reporter, Sarah Wilkinson, was arrested at her home, allegedly for the content she published online in support of Palestine and against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. On the same day British police arrested the co-founder of Palestine Action, Richard Barnard, and charged him with three offences for comments he made in two speeches.

London-based World Socialist website said the arrests of the journalists were part of the escalation by the British ruling class against left-wing journalists and outspoken opponents of the US-backed Israeli campaign of extermination of Palestinians in Gaza.

One week after the Wilkinson arrest, two former editors of the now defunct Stand News – Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam Shui-tung – were found guilty of sedition. Prosecutors alleged Stand News had sought to incite hatred against authorities through 17 articles published between July 2020 and December 2021.

The articles included interviews with detained activists, such as Owen Chow, Fergus Leung, and Gwyneth Ho, who were among 45 others convicted of conspiring to commit subversion. Ho had worked as a journalist at Stand News during the 2019 protests.

The 57-day trial was overseen by District Court Judge Kwok Wai-kin, who ruled that 11 of the 17 publications raised by the prosecution were seditious, noting that the political climate at the time was extremely heated and many people were unhappy with the SAR and central governments. He ruled that the political ideology of Stand News was localism, and its stance was to "support and promote Hong Kong’s local autonomy".

“During the anti-extradition bill movement, it even became a tool to smear and vilify the central authorities and the SAR government,” Kwok wrote in his judgement.

Immediately after the verdict was delivered, the mainstream media (msm) and the usual suspects (Reporters without Borders, Hong Kong Journalists Association, Amnesty International etc,) jumped to the defence of the Stand News duo, all claiming the verdict was unfair and an infringement on press freedom.

And it is interesting to note that the UK arrests of two journalists, who favoured towards Palestine, received very little interest in the msm, but when anything untoward happens in Hong Kong there is world-wide condemnation.

The explanation is simple. Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US are members of an exclusive club, known as the Five Eyes intelligence network. Members of the club cannot think for themselves and, like puppets on a string, follow the lead of the US, which, in its quest to maintain world dominance, will do anything to ostracize China/Hong Kong by drawing on the support of its allies.

Foreign critics of Hong Kong’s national security laws (NSL) and freedom of the press have failed to recognise that the sedition offence was not covered by the NSL, but by existing Hong Kong laws introduced by the Hong Kong colonial government to prosecute pro-communist newspapers in the ‘50s and 60s.

Uncharacteristically, Britain’s Secretary for the Foreign Commonwealth and Development, Lord David Cameron has not yet commented on the verdict and left that to a junior minister. Cameron, a friend of China-haters Lord Christ Patten and Lord David Alton, had previously been very critical of Hong Kong’s handling of dissidents, including Stand News. Perhaps he is very aware of the implications of the arrest of the two British journalists and believes in the adage that “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

The only British reaction came from the Indo-Pacific minister, Catherine West who urged Hong Kong authorities to “end politicised prosecutions of journalists and uphold press and publication freedoms” as spelled out by the Basic Law. “Journalism is not a crime,” she said, and that Chung and Lam were convicted “for doing their job.”

Indeed, journalism is not a crime, but perhaps these editors were doing more “than their job.” There is a thick red line between criticizing the government and inciting hatred against the administration, which is sedition anywhere. Trained journalists know when they cross that line as it is a deliberate act, as Judge Kwok pointed out. They cannot claim ignorance as the definition is very clear with the key word being “incitement.”

Mark Pinkstone

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

The Australian senate has decided that Taiwan is not part of China, despite its federal government’s stand and that of the United Nations that there is only one China.
A bipartisan group of senators, who took part in the US-funded Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) conference in Taiwan, claim that the UN resolution identifying the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole China state, did not include Taiwan.

But even then it did not include Hong Kong, which is now a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. For 150 years Hong Kong was administered by the United Kingdon and was recognised as a British colony. Taiwan was settled by Kuomintang soldiers after their defeat by the communists only 80 years ago and remains a stronghold for this isolated group. However, China maintains it is officially Chinese territory, the same as Hong Kong when it was leased to the British.

If there is only one China, why is it necessary to include all of its provinces?

The Australian senators were obviously not aware of a 1972 communique establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries in which Australia recognized the PRC as “the sole legal government” and that the federal government acknowledged that Taiwan was a province of the PRC.

In a television interview in Australia in early August, former prime minister Paul Keating said the people of Taiwan were sitting on Chinese real estate and that it was part of China. He added that the United States could not and would not win a Taiwan Strait war and that Australia would only incur disadvantages by siding with America.

During the previous leadership in Australia under the then pro-American prime minister Scott Morrison, there was open talk about going to war with China over the island. Peter Dutton, then defence minister and now leader of the opposition, proclaimed that it was inconceivable that Australia would not support the US in any conflict with China over Taiwan and warned of the terrible price of inaction on Taiwan.

There may have been some sabre-rattling when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which the US propaganda team used as threatening war. Unlike its strong opponent, China is not a warmonger and has never instigated a war anywhere in the world. It is a peace maker and saber-rattling is not war, but a show of force.

But despite all the rhetoric about the status of Taiwan, the Australian government has always and still does recognize the one China policy.

Australian sponsors of the Taiwan motion were Labor senator Deb O’Neil and Liberal senator David Fawcett, both of whom attended the July meeting of IPAC in Taiwan where attending lawmakers from six countries agreed to counter the UN Resoution 2758 (recognizing the one China policy) in their home countries. Taiwan became a member of IPAC during the meeting.
So, IPAC is pro-Taiwan, anti-China and is funded, in part, by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. A member of the group is Britain’s Lord David Alton, a rabid China-hater, who has fuelled discontent among activists seeking to bring down the Hong Kong admnistration. The bias of IPAC is clear and is clouded by the US influence to undermine China.

The Australians, under the Morrison regime had been greatly prejudiced by the Americans as illustrated when Morrison cancelled a French agreement to build submarines in favor of an expensive American deal which formed an alliance of AUKUS (Australia/United Kingdom/United States) as a military force.

So there can be no doubt that the move by Australian senators is nothing more than a political ploy to appease the Americans and will not change Australia’s position that there is only one China.