The Hyat Report

So, today I am going to talk about Hong Kong’s popular pro-democracy newspaper/tabloid, Apple Daily, its shutting down this weekend. This comes against the backdrop of 5 of Apple Daily’s editors and executives being arrested by Hong Kong’s authorities under its new Security Law that was introduced a year ago.

Now, to understand why and under which charges these 5 editors and executives were arrested, we have to take a step back and unpack the Hong Kong’s new security law and understand what it stands for and how it was passed. The law itself came into effect last year in June just a few hours before the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China from British control. When the city was handed over to China in 1997, it was done so under an agreement called the basic law, which was meant to protect Hong Kong’s freedom to peaceful protests, free speech and independent judiciary amongst some other basic democratic rights, under the same agreement Hong Kong was meant to pass its own national security law but that never happened because residents of the city did not want it and did not support such a law. In fact, in back in 2003 there was an attempt to pass national security law in Hong Kong and the people took to the streets protesting against it and it never came to fruition.

So, this time around when the law was passed, in June 2020, not many people were aware of its provisions and it was passed under secrecy and some of the key provisions of this security law are Crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, which are very vague phrases and according to the text of this law, it is applicable to not only the residents of the city but also to non-residents and also to people who do not live in the city, and people fear that the whole law could mean anything. 

As I was scrolling through my twitter feed this morning, I came across tweets claiming that Press TV’s websites, which is an Iranian news channel, were seized by the United States. I am someone who do not usually just believe everything I read on social media, so I decided to do some research. Obviously, I first went to PressTV.Com and there indeed I found a message that read “The domain presstv.com has been seized by the United States Government in accordance with a seizure warrant issued…….by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and Federal Bureau of Investigation”, again I thought this could just be some hackers trying to provoke two countries who have been at odds for decades.

 So, the next thing I did was, I went to the U.S Department of Justice’ website, which is also called DOJ in short, and there I found a statement that was dated Tuesday, the 22 June 2021 and in that statement, DOJ, indeed announced seizing 33 websites “used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU)”. For the context, In October 2020, Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of Treasury, in short OFAC, that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S foreign policy and national security goals designated IRTVU as a “Specially Designated National (SDN)” for “attempting to influence elections in the United States”. 

 Now, you may ask what is an SDN, so, according to U.S Department of the Treasury, SDNs are “individuals and companies owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of, targeted countries” and of course in this case the targeted country is Iran, because Iran has been under U.S sanctions for decades and the SDN is IRTVU for allegedly acting on behalf of Iran to “subvert U.S democratic processes” and under the U.S law, SDNs are prohibited from obtaining services, including website and domain services, in the United States without an OFAC licence. Against this backdrop the U.S Justice Department announced seizing these 33 websites. The U.S DOJ also seized three additional websites which were allegedly operated by “Kata’ib Hizballah”, which is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation by U.S State Department and an SDN by OFAC since July 2009.

 However, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson refuting American claims said that this act of website seizure by the United States was a systematic effort to disrupt freedom of expression and make silent the independent voices in media spaces and commenting further stated that Iran would follow up the case via legal channels.

 In my honest opinion, the timing of this seizure of websites by the United States seems a little more than just enforcing sanctions, it appears to me that this a pressure tactic by the U.S on Iran, because Iran just had its presidential elections and elected a “hardliner”, Ebrahim Raisi, who has been quoted as saying that unlike Hassan Rouhani he won’t put all his eggs in one basket, by that he meant he won’t just rely on JCPOA for economic recovery and instead he would form alliances with countries in the region and elsewhere and potentially develop domestic economy. Also, if America’s goal was to only enforce sanctions, it could have done that last year soon after designating IRTVU as an SDN. To me personally, it appears that Biden administration is sending a message to Iran’s government and wants to demonstrate that the U.S is still in charge. 

On the 16 June 2021 U.S President Biden met with his Russian Counterpart President Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. Soon after this meeting, the President of the United States addressing the press corp in an effort to declare Putin as gone rogue, innocently declared “his credibility worldwide shrinks” and then he went on to again very naively question “how would it be if United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he engaged in? it diminishes the standing of a country?” 

So, Biden is literally saying that (A) Russia has interfered in other countries’ elections including the U.S and (B) that the U.S has not interfered in other countries elections. Hmm are we missing something. Like really, like honestly, who is President Biden kidding? Does he really think that America has not interfered in other countries’ elections? Does he really think that America does not continue to interfere in other countries’ elections? OK! Right off the bat I wanna make it clear that pointing out American interference in other countries’ elections does not mean siding with Russia, so on that note, let’s take a look at America’s glorious history of interfering in other countries and other countries’ elections starting from the Middle East.

According to Human Rights Watch, since 2015, the armed conflict in Yemen has resulted in the largest humanitarian crisis in the world with 20 million people experiencing food insecurity and ten million of these people are at the risk of famine. And Mind you according to U.N estimates total population of Yemen is just over 30 million. So, let’s talk about the conflict in Yemen.

Arab Spring is a term that refers to uprisings which began in 2010 in Tunisia and later spread across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Initially these uprisings started off as peaceful protests against tyranny, dictatorship, decades of oppression and low standard of living.

 In January 2011, Yemen was already a poor country and was facing a lot of socio-economic issues when Arab Spring knocked on its doors in the form of peaceful protests that included everyday Yemenis as well as prominent opposition factions, calling for change and demanding the then President Saleh’s resignation. 

 Saleh made all possible attempts to stay in power, which included multiple negotiations, only to then walk back on some of those negotiated agreements, resulting in further protests, an assassination attempt on his life, an escape to Saudi Arabia for life saving treatment. And when he returned to Yemen, in late November of 2011, he signed an agreement to transfer power to his then Vice President Hadi. The agreement called for a presidential election to be held in February 2012 with Hadi as the only candidate on the ballot, ensuring Saleh would remain President until then. The agreement also called for a National Dialogue that would allow various political factions of the country to provide their input into formulation of a new constitution.

Torture, Sexual Violence and Genocide, are some of the allegations against China’s so called “re-education” camps in Xinjiang. China claims that these are its de-radicalisation/vocational centres for Uyghurs. Most western democracies allege that these so-called re-education camps is a fancy phrase for internment camps. So, let’s talk about Uyghurs and their persecution.