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China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

theguardian.com

31–40 of 44 posts

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#31
post #8

There was a parallel story in Denmark where the Danish police prevented free Tibet demonstrators demonstrating during the visit of the Chinese president in 2012. It led to an official inquiry but the trail ended blind where the leading police officers giving orders to detain the demonstrators could not remember where their instructions came from and the electronic paper trail had been deleted. To me the Danish story…

This reminds me of how China uses their panda’s for diplomatic reasons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panda_diplomacy

"If, as you say, it is no crime to be a panda, then why were we arrested?"

Best New Yorker cartoon ever.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#32
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read similar stories about lost police documents. A public blockchain could be useful to prevent that.

The issue was not the internal communication within the police. For that there was a complete paper trail. But the top police officers got their instructions from somewhere; probably high ranking civil servants, spin doctors or maybe even politicians in the then government. Those communications were gone.

Really for cases like this the only way through is the Nuremberg one: "only following orders" is not a defence, especially if you can't or won't say who gave the order.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#33
post #9

Coming from a free speech country I'm kinda curious about this. In the UK can they arrest you for peacefully protesting? I'm looking at the law the paper cites that he was arrested under[0][1]. 1) I'm ASTOUNDED that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor. > (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threa…

The public order act is extremely abusable, but it's intended to be that way. Note the date; it was right in the middle of the Thatcherite war on demonstrators, just after the Orgreave battles with striking miners and a few years after the Bloody Sunday firing on demonstrators and subsequent whitewash.

The British public (and especially press) is quite conservative, and prefer the maintenance of "order" to the extent of cheering on violence against demonstrators.

The practical use of S5POA is not for criminalising random swearing, but specifically to give police a pretext for arresting people who haven't committed a crime but are otherwise upset at being stopped by the police.

Peak silliness may have been the 1994 attempt to ban raves, characterised by "repetitive beats": http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/enacted (s63). Peak violence may have been the "kettling" of thousands of demonstrators in Oxford circus for hours in the early 2000s.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#34
post #8

There was a parallel story in Denmark where the Danish police prevented free Tibet demonstrators demonstrating during the visit of the Chinese president in 2012. It led to an official inquiry but the trail ended blind where the leading police officers giving orders to detain the demonstrators could not remember where their instructions came from and the electronic paper trail had been deleted. To me the Danish story…

I've read similar stories about lost police documents. A public blockchain could be useful to prevent that.

That'll drive them to use encrypted channels without oversight. The functioning of many a government agency isn't a derivation of the official processes. The official processes and record keeping are something that needs to be "Worked around" in many of these agencies.

The foundation of America as a country was based upon the Founding Fathers deep mistrust of the concentration of power. They used the word "Government" to describe this back then, but today, the influence of governmental agencies, private corporations and large unions with outsize decision making powers all threaten regularly the exercise of individual liberty as this case shows.

The answer is to return power to the people. The default scenario shouldn't be that someone gets arrested for whatever reason an unelected bureaucrat decides. Government or their agencies should have to request express permission to breach an individuals liberties and not the rubber stamp BS they follow now with warrants that require a threshold that's more likely than not to be granted on a mere suspicion. Transparency in this process is much more key to the honest functioning of Government than many others.

Much too often, for the sake of brevity or to just follow a routine, judges and the people entrusted with safeguarding these liberties and acting as a check tend to obfuscate much of the process or worse, leave it up without the possibility of contesting the decision until after severe actions such as remand are carried out. We need to reinforce individual liberties.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#35
post #9

Coming from a free speech country I'm kinda curious about this. In the UK can they arrest you for peacefully protesting? I'm looking at the law the paper cites that he was arrested under[0][1]. 1) I'm ASTOUNDED that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor. > (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threa…

Judges tend to push back a bit if people are being arrested for merely swearing, especially if it's only at police officers.

Judges will say if you're in the job as a police officer that you need to be a bit robust about the language you hear.

They also say that we're not a nation of nuns and schoolgirls and so the everyday "man in the street" won't be aghast at the occasional swear word.

The public order act is problematic, and it does need to be reformed, but it's not as catastrophic as it appears.

We've just had a popular musician leading a chant of "Fuck off Boris" [Johnson], and that was broadcast on BBC tv. There are no arrests.

The other thing that causes real confusion on HN is that police and crown prosecution service have discretion about when to arrest and when to prosecute and they're too busy dealing with criminals to go around arresting people who've only sworn.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#36
post #9

Coming from a free speech country I'm kinda curious about this. In the UK can they arrest you for peacefully protesting? I'm looking at the law the paper cites that he was arrested under[0][1]. 1) I'm ASTOUNDED that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor. > (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threa…

This may be a controversial opinion so please, disagree through speech and not downvotes:

No other nation on the planet guarantees free speech to their citizens as a right other than the USA

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#37
post #35
post #9

Coming from a free speech country I'm kinda curious about this. In the UK can they arrest you for peacefully protesting? I'm looking at the law the paper cites that he was arrested under[0][1]. 1) I'm ASTOUNDED that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor. > (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threa…

Judges tend to push back a bit if people are being arrested for merely swearing, especially if it's only at police officers. Judges will say if you're in the job as a police officer that you need to be a bit robust about the language you hear. They also say that we're not a nation of nuns and schoolgirls and so the everyday "man in the street" won't be aghast at the occasional swear word. The public order act is prob…

In some ways the discretion makes it worse: it becomes a general purpose offense of "annoying a police officer". They're not enforcing that against EDL marches or the Orange Order, for example.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#38
post #12

If liberalism, democratic values, multilaterialism, cultural open-mindedness, and compromise aren't at the very forefront of the foreign policy of Western countries, then this is what they will have to look forward to in the next century and beyond. This is why projects like the EU, NATO, & NAFTA that require compromise for the sake of mutually beneficial cooperation should be supported. This is why continuing any po…

There is a bit of a problem considering that the organizations that you name are also in blatant violoation of the principles that you name. As the EU is growing, it has incorporated countries with not very strong liberal values, so liberalism may not have a majority in the decision making process. Also, the EU is a very non-democratic organization. The executive power of the countries ends up in the lawgiver seat wh…

> Also, the EU is a very non-democratic organization.

Can you more concisely (or just differently) elaborate on why you think this is the case? I'm not sure I got it from what you said.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#39
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

The more the West is condemning China without any results, the more we normalise this kind of behaviour, which in turn makes Westerners tolerate unfreedom.

Re: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

#40
post #16
post #9

Coming from a free speech country I'm kinda curious about this. In the UK can they arrest you for peacefully protesting? I'm looking at the law the paper cites that he was arrested under[0][1]. 1) I'm ASTOUNDED that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor. > (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threa…

> I understand my neighbors across the pond may not feel that way and I'd be curious about their thoughts. Is this just an abuse of that law? Does that law also feel undemocratic? Other more nuanced position? I'm from Europe, though not from the UK. That law feels abhorrent. You'll often hear the claim that "other countries have a more nuanced view of free speech". It's certainly true free speech protections are weak…

I think article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights is much more like the first amendment that what the UK has. How they can have the laws they do while still pretending to follow them makes me wonder though.

>Article 19.

>Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

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