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BBC: The cost of speaking up against China (Uyghurs)

bbc.com

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Re: BBC: The cost of speaking up against China (Uyghurs)

#2

Post by TeeMassive »

> The UK Foreign Office told the BBC it was "closely monitoring reports that members of the Uyghur diaspora in the UK have been harassed by the Chinese authorities", and that it had "raised our concerns directly with the Chinese embassy in London".

I've always wondered, how is it not against the law to act on a foreign government's orders to harass citizens? We know that certain academics are getting arrested, but mainly for spying, IP theft and lying, at least in the US.

But I've never seen reports of arrests made on those grounds. It's a well known fact that "students" will show up at universities to check on other Chinese citizens and dissidents. Yet nothing happens.

Re: BBC: The cost of speaking up against China (Uyghurs)

#4

Post by adventured »

TeeMassive wrote: post #2

> The UK Foreign Office told the BBC it was "closely monitoring reports that members of the Uyghur diaspora in the UK have been harassed by the Chinese authorities", and that it had "raised our concerns directly with the Chinese embassy in London". I've always wondered, how is it not against the law to act on a foreign government's orders to harass citizens? We know that certain academics are getting arrested, but ma…

Primarily because very light harrassment isn't generally illegal and won't typically get you arrested. You'll be hard-pressed to get someone to care about that. The Beijing reps are surely careful about the extent of it, about not going too far, in most cases. Since the target likely knows who they represent, they don't have to press too far, they just have to make their presence known and it's enough to terrify without any specific act of violence or threat occurring (which limits what the police & co. can or will do). And last but not least, does the target want to ramp things up further with Beijing by pursuing it criminally, trying to get a restraining order, and so on. If the target succeeds, Beijing can just send more. It's lose, lose, lose, every direction you turn when a superpower has marked you and you lack any consequential power.

Much like the IRS trying to battle the Church of Scientology, they have an army of followers willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. How do you fight that, other than for the Feds to get involved and start removing these people from the US by the hundreds. It wouldn't surprise me if the Feds just follow & watch on purpose for intel acquisition purposes.

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