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Comment by woooooo

2 days ago

Wasn't meaning to ignore the trend, the PRC bears full responsibility for their actions. Just saying that complaints from the British in particular are a little rich.

Also they appear to be arresting more people for speech in total and per-capita than HK:

https://insider.iea.org.uk/p/30-people-arrested-daily-for-sp...

https://insider.iea.org.uk/p/30-people-arrested-daily-for-sp...

That is not even remote comparable. There is a huge difference between arrest and conviction, and whether people are given a proper hearing or not, between legal process and things like disappearances, and between laws that punish criticism of the authorities and hate speech laws.

I do not like the UK's hate speech laws at all, but the fact is that I can criticise them, from the UK, without fear, and I can criticise the government. Could I do that in China? Of course not.

  • I'm not disagreeing too hard with you, we probably feel similarly about both cases. I just don't like how western media takes a "we're the good guys and they're a dystopia" approach to reporting it.

    They've charged like 250 people in 5 years under this law[1], I don't like any one of those cases, I'm also against it, but it gets characterized like nobody ever catches a bullshit charge in the West.

    [1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/06/hong-kong-nat...

I don’t see any discussion about complaints from the British in this thread.

You can't even accuse people of sex crimes or threaten to murder them without getting arrested any more! What is the world coming to?