Press Freedom is Under Threat in the Land of its Birth

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/29/press-freedom-is-under-threat-in-the-land-of-its-birth/
Date Written:  2019-05-29
Publisher:  Counterpunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23747

The author draws parallels between the US and Hong Kong's treatment of freedom and individual rights.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The US is itself clearly flouting the extradition treaty it signed in 2003 with the UK, which states that neither nation will extradite to the other anyone who faces politically motivated prosecution. Yet just this past week, the US filed 17 charges of violation of the hoary US Espionage Act, a measure enacted by Congress in 1917 during the First World War that has rarely been used since then and that is widely viewed as designed to target political opponents of the government.

How, really, could the US with a straight face object to Hong Kong passing an act that endorses extradition for political "crimes" while Washington is aggressively pursuing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for political "crimes" based upon a law that could end up, if he were extradited and then tried and convicted in the US, with his being sentenced to life for simply publishing truths about US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan?

There is some connection between Hong Kong's proposed new extradition law and the US obsession with capturing and prosecuting Assange. It was to Hong Kong, recall, that Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, first fled to avoid prosecution for releasing tens of thousands of documents exposing the monstrous spying program being conducted against all Americans and most foreign countries by the NSA.