Opinion | America & Hong Kong, a double standard in campus occupations
By Tom Fowdy
As a result of America's unconditional support of Israel's brutal war in Gaza, a movement started at New York's Columbia University that has seen students, amongst other activists, occupy campuses and call for divestment of their institution's ties with Tel Aviv. The movement quickly spread across the country, as well as the world. Perhaps to nobody's surprise, the occupations have drawn widespread condemnation from the American political and media class who have branded them "Antisemitic". The occupations have also quickly escalated into confrontations with police, leading to arrests, damage to property and some groups barricading themselves in. This behaviour has also been decried by commentators.
It is perhaps an irony to see that the United States at large has little tolerance for a highly disruptive student movement occupying university campuses, of which they describe as "rioters", not least because five years ago the same media and politicians were giving unconditional backing to rioters in Hong Kong, who by a measure of comparison make the protesters at Columbia look like Ghandi. In late 2019, I travelled to the SAR to witness these events for myself and on visiting my old University Campus at HKU I discovered much to my horror that the rioters had completely destroyed the surroundings of the campus, having burnt down all of its entrances, pulled up all bricks from the pavement and coated it in vandalism.
Similarly, I also travelled to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Kowloon, where a dramatic "campus siege" had also taken place and effectively wrecked the facility, with the occupiers even going as far as making their own weapons. Here, the mainstream media narrative depicted the occupation as "protecting themselves" from the police. Again, the events in Columbia University pale in comparison to this. Yet people backed one, but happily endorse the response of law enforcement against the other. This of course was not just a university matter, throughout the city, the rioters had destroyed traffic lights, train stations, police stations, shops and effectively created anarchy.
It is not inaccurate to describe the Hong Kong riots of 2019-2020 as a foreign backed insurrection because that is essentially what it was, and to that end the level of violence, but also the sophistication of their organisation, mission and goals were also far more elevated than a few left-wing radicals in the US occupying university campuses. Despite this, the response of the Hong Kong police force was opportunistically branded as "oppression", which is an irony for me as the same right-wing senators such as Marsha Blackburn call for the mass arrest, expulsion and even deportation of those involved in Columbia. She has even gone as far as smearing everyone involved in the protests as terrorists!
Essentially, the United States has one standard for protests on its own territory, and another for those overseas in countries it doesn't like. What it deems to be "violent riots" at home are expected to be met with the full force of the law, but what happens overseas are as Nancy Pelosi described, a "beautiful sight to behold" that are "peaceful protests" for "democracy and freedom." Thus, when Hong Kong rioters ransacked the legislative council building in 2019, this was deemed just and honourable, but when supporters of Donald Trump ransacked the Capitol building in 2021, it was denounced (not necessarily wrongly) as a "riot" and created years of controversy. Why does the US do to others, what it does not like being done to itself?
If the US thus has the right to use police force to dispatch violent protests, and to prosecute those involved, so does Hong Kong. We don't even need to answer what the US would do if it had feasible evidence that those responsible were in fact funded by foreign forces or entities, which I might add is effectively illegal in US politics, where paranoia about "foreign influence" is taken to the extreme (unless of course it is Israel). In this case, we should remember that the National Security Law (NSL) was a reasonable response to the total breakdown of law and order in Hong Kong following the impact of these foreign backed riots.
There is ultimately no country in the world that would tolerate that status quo, not least those who are the self-appointed voices of democracy and freedom. Thus, as the events at Columbia and other universities unfold, it is worth keeping in mind their blatant double standards and the differential mindset behind the two sets of events. Nothing comes close to what happened in Hong Kong.
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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