Opinion | Imposition of de-facto wartime censorship shows West's hypocrisy over Hong Kong
By Tom Fowdy
As the war in Ukraine has escalated, western countries are in a de-facto state of war against Russia, one which compromises everything apart from actual shooting. Diplomats are being expelled, effective economic embargos are being initiated but most concerning of all, censorship regimes are being unrolled of unprecedented scope in peacetime history. This includes a European Union wide ban on Russian state media outlets Sputnik and Russia Today, which have been subsequently blocked by Facebook. In several European countries, it has been confirmed that governments are imposing criminal charges for expressions of support for Moscow, including online. In the Czech Republic, this can be punished by up to 3 years in prison, and reportedly up to 25 in neighboring Slovakia.
Censorship of course, is an inevitable product of war. Warfare is psychological and informational as well as physical, and in such scenarios, states become insecure and seek to sustain narrative control in order to prevent unrest, subversion and undermining of the war effort by the enemy, whilst simultaneously seeking to sabotage the opponents with their own. However, it might be noted that such efforts arrive in extraordinary circumstances, given that such countries depict themselves as liberal democracies and supporting "freedom of speech" and the press. Whilst obviously security is an important variable in these decisions, it should not go unnoticed that these countries all vehemently criticized Hong Kong's national security law as a suppression of freedom, despite the fact that it had the very same purposes as the restrictions they are imposing now.
The Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL) in some ways reflects wartime censorship regimes, in the fact that it was introduced as an extraordinary measure in response to western-backed unrest, instability and subversion which reduced the city to chaos for two years. Effectively, Hong Kong was being subject to a hybrid war being led by the West, a quasi-insurgency whereby unbridled backing was being given to figures unleashing destruction across the city and even attempting to disable its infrastructure, such as attacks on the MTR and even an attempt to shut down the airport itself. A quick look at Canada's response to the "freedom convoy" US-backed anti-vaccine protests over the past few weeks shows this behavior is unacceptable in a western country, and in turn emergency laws and regulations are utilized to suspend liberties and restore stability.
And this is what the NSL was all about. In lieu of these extraordinary circumstances, its primary purpose was to tackle threats to the security, stability and prosperity against the city, as well as to safeguard the national sovereignty of the country as a whole given the broader narrative of the movement sought to challenge the notion the territory was part of China. The NSL subsequently restored Hong Kong to normal and ended the riots, but was nonetheless subject to vitriolic criticism from the western media who argued it constituted suppression of the city's freedom and a violation of the Sino-British declaration, seeking to portray Hong Kong as a dystopia.
Yet this only goes to illustrate the double standards at hand. Why is it acceptable for some countries in Europe to effectively criminalize support for Moscow, to shut down Russian media outlets, all on the premise of national security, but exert that Hong Kong has no such rights to safeguard itself from very real foreign threats. Russia Today is being branded in the West now as a tool of foreign influence, a propaganda operation, yet outlets in Hong Kong which were also shut down for receiving foreign backing and undermining the security of the city, such as for example the Apple Daily (there was no mention of how Jimmy Lai had ties to Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence), were condemned as an assault on freedom of the press and journalism. Where is the consistency? There is none. And it only goes to show that there was an obvious agenda at play in the SAR.
But of course, such double standards only serve to elaborate how the West perceives itself to the rest of the world. They are a group of countries which believe they hold a monopoly over "political truth" and that they are enlightened and exceptional, and in turn anything which convenes their narrative is deemed "misinformation" or "propaganda". This gives the right to believe only they can legitimately impose censorship regimes on the merits of national security, and that any other state who does so is acting out of malice or in the name of authoritarianism, their willingness to attack Hong Kong's national security law despite what happened in the city is primary evidence of this. The state of war with Russia is sending a chill across the West, one which is challenging their orthodoxy of being so-called open societies.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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