Liz Truss must stand up to China against the genocide of the Uyghur muslims At Conservative Party Conference, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called the UK a “lodestar of freedom and democracy” and called for Great Britain to work with allies to promote freedom around the world. “The democratic world order faces a stark choice,” she said. “Either we retreat and retrench in the face of malign actors … or [...]
Britain must be alive to the threat of Chinese influence in our universities Last year, Downing Street U-turned on a decision to grant Chinese state-backed telecomms giant Huawei even “non-core” access to Britain’s 5G famework. The threat of influence or privacy invasion was deemed to be too high a price to pay. Not so for Cambridge University it seems. Yesterday, it was revealed that three out of the [...]
Analysis: Freedom is on its last legs in Hong Kong as Beijing takes control of children’s books It is almost a parody of the stereotypical authoritarian coup. But it’s real, and horrifying. Three members of Hong Kong’s union for Speech Therapy have been arrested for writing a “seditious” children’s book called “The Guardian of Sheep Village”. The story about sheep and wolves has a thinly veiled political message and now seemingly even [...]
Beijing has done irreparable damage to Hong Kong after freezing top media mogul’s assets May 19, 2021 On Friday, the owner of Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy newspaper had his assets, amounting to HKD$500 million, frozen. Mr Lai was already facing trumped up charges under the National Security Law, but this step is the biggest blow to date for press freedoms and puts the long-run viability of his newspaper, Apple Daily, into question. [...]
It’s a myth to say sustainable and ethical clothing can’t be affordable April 8, 2021 Forced labour. Environmental hazard. A race to the bottom. It is no secret that the fashion industry is broken. Clothes are the second highest products at risk of slavery and produce around 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s more than planes. With labour supply across the global supply chain exceeding demand, fashion [...]
Hong Kong’s democratic dreams have been trashed by Chinese power grab – the UK must use Magnitsky sanctions March 31, 2021 The Chinese government’s actions in Hong Kong are a textbook case study of an authoritarian power-grab. Redefine national security. Exercise emergency powers in the name of national security and use these powers to take total control. Lock up the opposition. Rig the elections. Rewrite the constitution. The details of Beijing’s electoral reforms for Hong Kong [...]
As China signs the final death warrant for Hong Kong’s democracy, there must global condemnation March 9, 2021 This week, China sounded the final death knell for Hong Kong’s democratic aspirations. New proposals which significantly reduce the number of democratically elected seats, to be signed-off later in the week by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, mark the onset of full-blown totalitarianism. Commenting on the proposed reforms, Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, [...]