China is strangling media and political freedom in Hong Kong . The once vibrant international city is now a citadel of Communist Party repression. It's a place where elementary school students are asked to report one another and from which dissidents are hunted for kidnapping .
This week saw the city take yet another waltz into Communist autocracy. On Thursday, the two senior editors of the now-defunct Stand News outlet were convicted of seditious conspiracy against the Chinese Communist Party.
The presiding judge ruled that 11 of the Stand News's articles had unlawfully promoted "Hong Kong local autonomy." He added that the outlet "became a tool to smear and vilify [the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong]."
The two editors, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, already have served nearly a year in prison but now face an additional year in custody.
Sadly, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the destruction of Hong Kong's freedom.
In recent years, political parties and candidates who were not wholly deferential to the Chinese Communist Party have been banned. Numerous politicians have been imprisoned. Media outlets that dare to question whether China's crackdown on Hong Kong freedom is compatible with the Sino-British joint declaration, a binding treaty under which Beijing undertook to uphold the former British colony's democratic rule of law until at least 2047, have been shuttered. Many of their journalists and publishers have been imprisoned.
This judicial conduct, orchestrated by Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks in Beijing, is plainly incompatible with any notion of basic media or political freedom. It is also plainly at odds with the binding Sino-British joint declaration. In so, China's conduct underlines the utter absurdity of Beijing's claims to the contrary.
Take the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman who claimed Friday that "the rights and freedoms Hong Kong residents enjoy in accordance with law, including freedom of press, are fully protected. This is an undeniable fact."
He added, laughably, that foreign governments that have criticized the Stand News ruling should "abide by the principles of international law and the basic norms of international relations."
You could choke on the hypocrisy. As Beijing shreds its treaty obligations and other basic human rights norms, it still has the gall to attack others who call on China to uphold its obligations. Beijing's screeching rhetoric offers another tedious example of its belief that international law should be defined not by legal agreements but rather by whatever suits Beijing in any one moment. The same applies to China's stance in the South China Sea , for example.
The problem for the West is that Beijing thinks it can get away with this gambit. Supported by bought-off Western judges such as the former top Justice on the U.K. Supreme Court, Lord David Edmond Neuberger , Beijing's Hong Kong repression comes with a veil of legal credibility. It is a very thin veil, to be sure, but a veil that nevertheless allows Western companies to justify their continued trade in Hong Kong.
It's time for bolder Western action. The United States should introduce sanctions on individuals such as Neuberger and organizations such as the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong that want to remain complicit in Hong Kong's human rights implosion. The same approach should be taken against U.S. companies operating in Hong Kong.
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It shouldn't be that complicated.
After all, to justify such sanctions, the U.S. need only contrast the human rights commitments that companies such as Amway, Coca-Cola, Dell, Mars, Merck, and others make on their websites and their deafening silence when asked about how these same commitments comport with China's ruthless silencing of dissent in Hong Kong.
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