printWhy has a Falun Gong demonstrator, who heckled Chinese President Hu Jintao, being charged? I must have misheard all that stuff about American liberties, for if we arrest and charge people for peaceful—if noisy—protest, then what are our freedoms worth?
If this is the practice in the U.S., then our venerated liberties exist on a continuum, alongside China’s “freedoms.” As anti-Chinese mediacrats have taken pains to point out, the Chinese would have tortured that protester; we merely lock her up for a short duration (six months, apparently), under bearable conditions (sometimes with the prospects of a book deal in the offing).
Official dignitaries should be treated with decorum. But arresting the protester, a woman by the name of Iting Lin, while blabbering to the Chinese president about his need to respect his people’s human rights and freedom to assemble, speak, and worship—now that’s what you would call a performative contradiction.
Much more embarrassing than the Falun Gong incident was a White House announcer introducing the anthem of China as that of the “Republic of China”—the formal name for Taiwan.
Well, the Chinese can have a double chuckle at the expense of American “freedoms” and… ignorance.