Stand with Hong Kong and Agnes Chow

Agnes Chow is a petite, soft-spoken 23-year-old who may soon disappear into the gulags of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Like everyone born in Hong Kong prior to 1997, she was a British citizen living in the freest city in China. That all changed when she was still a baby. Britain handed over control of Hong Kong to China after signing a treaty that Hong Kong would remain free for at least 50 years.

China lied. When Chow was only 15 years old, she could see the CCP was reneging. She began to speak out. By the time she was 20, China formally announced that it would no longer honor the 1984 treaty.

Last June they used Carrie Lam, their puppet mayor of Hong Kong, in a bid to rewrite the law so they could arrest people like Chow and extradite them to secret trials. She joined millions of Hongkongers for a summer of peaceful demonstrations that eventually caused Lam to withdraw the proposed law.

Then, in the November elections, 71-percent of registered voters showed up to the polls where the pro-democracy movement won in a landslide. Almost 80-percent of the pro-Beijing communists were ousted from Hong Kong’s government.

Unable to impose their tyranny through the ballot box, Beijing simply imposed it by decree. In late May the CCP announced that they would be imposing a new “National Security Law,” (NSL) with no input from the elected leaders of Hong Kong. They didn’t even allow the mayor to see the law until after it was imposed on July 1.

Among other things, the NSL effectively makes it a treasonous offense to speak against the CCP or to be a member of any organization that opposes it in any way. The language is broad enough to criminalize virtually anything that the CCP doesn’t like. Anticipating this threat, Chow disbanded Demosisto, the organization that she co-founded, in the weeks before the NSL was imposed.

Nevertheless, on August 10, she was arrested for “suspicion of collusion with foreign forces under the National Security Law.” This move ominously signals that China will not content itself to enforce the draconian law against future infractions. It will also use the NSL retroactively to punish anyone who has ever spoken up for freedom.

While Agnes Chow is among the first to be arrested, the threat looms over everyone who has ever participated in a protest, supported democracy through social media, or even showed too much interest in the pro-democracy movement through the internet.

Google has a history of secret collaboration with China in manipulating their search engine. While their vice president of public policy told a Senate hearing that they terminated one such project, there is no transparency to verify their claim or to rule out the existence of other projects.

On July 6, Facebook, Google and Twitter publicly announced a temporary suspension in answering China’s demands for information on dissidents. They are not saying how many lives they have already endangered by betraying people before the suspension. Nor are they willing to tell the CCP to pound sand permanently.

America’s tech giants stand to profit billions of dollars in the Chinese market. If the cost of doing business in China includes the blood of dissidents, it’s a price they have been paying before the recent suspension. Perhaps they will resume after the spotlight has moved on.

The special problem for the Hongkongers is that dissidents on the mainland have long exercised extreme caution in their use of technology in order to avoid prison and death. By contrast, the people of Hong Kong had no need to fear betrayal by our tech giants because they were protected by an international treaty and democratically passed laws.

Now that these protections have been suddenly wiped away, the only thing standing between millions of Hongkongers and the bloodthirsty CCP is a profit-driven decision made by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.

The threat of arrest is compounded when one takes into account China’s booming organ harvesting business. An independent tribunal has been collecting evidence that the Chinese government makes over a billion dollars per year by killing political prisoners and transplanting their organs into people from all over the world.

Oddly, the Chinese government itself helped to corroborate the evidence of this evil when state media reported in 2012 that it would phase out the program of taking organs from executed prisoners. Since then, evidence has emerged not only that it has not ended the program, but that sometimes they don’t bother with the execution before harvesting the organs.

Such barbarism would be pure evil if it were practiced on hardened criminals. That it could be done to political prisoners like Agnes Chow leaves one speechless.

I do not want to write these words. Since I first became aware of China’s evil organ transplants, I have not wanted to burden even close members of my family. But it is precisely this self-imposed silence that allows it to continue. As terrible as this news is to hear, not hearing it is more terrible still.

It is our duty to know the true plight of the Chinese people. They have been oppressed by an atheistic, Marxist regime for decades. Now that the British government signed a treaty with a regime that never intended to keep it, an additional seven million people have been delivered to these butchers.

What can you do? Knowing is the first thing. The more people who know, the more hope that Agnes has. As more people become informed, it will affect the decisions we make from Washington to Silicon Valley.

As a result of China’s recently imposed NSL, the US government has already begun placing sanctions on the communist government. These sanctions will not only pressure the CCP, they will also cost money on Wall Street. International financiers do not want sanctions. They would rather keep the profits coming than stand for the people of Hong Kong.

By understanding what’s at stake and vocally supporting sanctions against China, you can help our government stand firm and do the right thing. You can also add pressure to the tech giants who hold the lives of millions in their hands. Do not let the spotlight move away from their actions. Hold them accountable for the trust you have given them.

It is not just the tech giants who have blood on their hands. Sports interests from Nike to the NBA are also complicit in China’s criminality. The NBA recently capitulated to the woke mob and allowed players to put social justice messages on their jerseys. Nevertheless, they submitted to the Chinese communists and forbade the players from having any messages in support of Hong Kong. Call them out.

Not only should large corporations rethink doing business with China, their criminality should give every American pause. Consider what you buy and whom you support. Financial pressure from the world can be a lifesaver for millions.

International ignorance of China’s crimes allows it to have favored nation status when it should be treated like the pariah it is. China may never treat its people justly. But a healthy fear of losing international approval can go a long way towards helping people like Agnes Chow.