West ignores its own past in stance on trial of Lai

Monday marked the beginning of the national security trial of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, the former Hong Kong media tycoon and founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily, who is charged with foreign collusion and could face up to life in prison.

Naturally, the mainstream Western media have responded by framing him in the language of a "pro-democracy" campaigner and depicting the situation as an act of state persecution against the freedom of Hong Kong. However, this is a willful and deliberate misinterpretation of the facts.

First of all, we might ask ourselves whether it would be tolerable for an influential media mogul in Britain or the United States to collaborate, as Lai is accused of doing, with the highest-level leadership of a hostile power to foment an agenda of creating political change? It might be added that in Western countries, people are often prosecuted for collusion on far less of a premise.

As a wealthy and influential dissident figure in Hong Kong, Lai actively and publicly engaged with the highest levels of the administration of former US president Donald Trump and was seen as a conduit for US foreign policy goals, which was encouraged by many senior US politicians as a means of getting at China.

Lai met with then US national security adviser John Bolton, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo and then vice-president Mike Pence, with the apparent goal of encouraging US intervention in the Hong Kong issue, which logically would represent a direct threat to China's sovereign interests.

We might ask ourselves again, would the US tolerate independence activists from Hawaii or Puerto Rico, or other state or territory, meeting with foreign leaders to further their agenda to undermine Washington's rule? Why would this be acceptable in Hong Kong just because it is under the banner of "freedom and democracy"?

In addition, Lai is accused of being a ringleader in one of the biggest periods of unrest, disorder and violence that the city of Hong Kong has ever seen. It is again without question that no other state on Earth would tolerate riots on such a scale with the view to sustaining total insurrection against the state.

We can visit other examples. The United Kingdom has increasingly hardened its laws on the prosecution and jailing of violent activists. For example, a large number of Just Stop Oil and other climate activists have been imprisoned for paralyzing public infrastructure or other forms of disorder and vandalism.

In other Western countries, in particular the US, police have no qualms about even using force to suppress disruptive protests. We might add that the punishment for those who led the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021 was also very harsh. Why should this be acceptable in Hong Kong, if not at home?

Given this, there is nothing unacceptable about the National Security Law for Hong Kong and its application to suppress foreign-backed insurrection that reduced the city to a state of chaos in 2019.Western countries are attempting to deprive China of its sovereign rights, in its own lawful territory, as a pretext to advancing their own ideological goals.

The Basic Law of Hong Kong has long mandated the inclusion of a national security law. More to the point, the designated autonomy of Hong Kong has never been extended to matters of high sovereignty, foreign policy, national security or defense.

The city is a better place after the insurrection was ended, and we should not pretend that 150 years of British rule made the city a beacon of freedom or democracy, where people were free to pursue large-scale destruction and violence in the pursuit of political goals.

The author is a British political and international relations analyst.