The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa on Tuesday lectured Canada on its alleged hypocrisy for denouncing China’s ruthless suppression of the Hong Kong democracy movement in 2019, but using similar iron-fisted tactics to smash the Freedom Convoy protest movement in 2022.
“Back in 2019, when radical elements assaulted the police and wantonly disrupted public order in Hong Kong, the Canadian side asserted that it will “stand up loudly and clearly for human rights all around the world” and wantonly criticized, maligned and smeared the Hong Kong police force,” the Chinese embassy recalled.
Police face off with demonstrators participating in a protest organized by truck drivers opposing vaccine mandates on Wellington St. on February 19, 2022 in Ottawa, Ontario. (Alex Kent/Getty Images)
“In the eyes of some people in Canada, similar protests and demonstrations should be referred to differently in different places. In Hong Kong, they are a ‘human rights movement,’ but in Canada they are ‘a threat to democracy.’ Such stark double standard is unacceptable,” the embassy snidely concluded.
A demonstrator is taken into custody as the police begin to break up a protest organized by truck drivers opposing vaccine mandates on February 18, 2022 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Some of the Canadians responding to China’s needling were eager to see their Freedom Convoy crackdown and raise them a Tiananmen Square massacre, while others dismissed China’s old rhetorical trick of drawing moral equivalence between its vicious political repression and the justice systems of more civilized nations. Chinese propagandists are always eager to seize on controversies related to crime or police work in Western countries and tout them as proof that democracy is no less unjust than Beijing’s fascism.
After China imposed its tyrannical “national security law” on Hong Kong to stamp out the democracy movement in 2020, Canada became a popular destination for Hong Kong refugees, especially Vancouver and Toronto.
Beijing and its puppet government in Hong Kong are increasingly concerned with the “brain drain” caused by talented and prosperous Hong Kong residents fleeing to Canada and other destinations.
Ironically, some of these former Hong Kong residents initially supported the stern measures taken against the 2019 protesters, much as many Canadians support shutting down the Freedom Convoy movement by any means necessary – but the Hongkongers soon learned that crackdowns against dissent have a way of spreading, “emergency” measures become permanent, and today’s unassuming citizen can quickly become tomorrow’s “insurrectionist.”