RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tiananmen-then-hong-kong-now/

Orville Schell, who covered the Tiananmen Square protests for the New York Review of Books 30 years ago, has an essay in Foreign Affairs that is worth your time. Schell compares what happened in Beijing then with what is going on in Hong Kong now. The similarities are not reassuring.

“The Tiananmen Square demonstrations taught that powerful movements of dissent against the Chinese Communist Party are almost always destined to end in confrontation,” Schell writes. “Why? Because such challenges are intolerable to a Leninist one-party system that allows no notion of dissent and whose leaders are perennially worried about displaying weakness.”

A generation ago, Deng Xiaoping waited until the conclusion of a high-profile summit with Mikhail Gorbachev before acting against the democracy activists in Tiananmen. Gorbachev departed on May 18. Within a few weeks, the government massacred the protestors.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/advocates-internationalize-the-fight-to-free-raif-badawi-from-saudi-prison

MONTREAL — More than seven years after Raif Badawi was thrown in prison, lawyers and allies of the Saudi blogger are increasingly lobbying foreign governments in an effort to secure his release as Saudi Arabia prepares to host next year’s G-20 meeting.

Irwin Cotler, a human rights lawyer and former federal justice minister who represents the family internationally, says advocates for Badawi have recently been meeting with foreign governments, UN representatives and others to encourage them to call for the release of Badawi, his sister Samar, their former lawyer Waleed Abulkhair and other imprisoned human rights defenders.

People hold pictures of Samar Badawi (C) and her brother jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi (R) as they demonstrate in support of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam, on May 7, 2015 in Paris. Stephane de Sakutin / AFP/Getty Images

Cotler sat down with The Canadian Press to discuss the intensifying effort to free the 35-year-old Badawi, who was arrested on June 17, 2012, and was later sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for his online criticism of Saudi clerics.

Cotler said it is urgent “to both internationalize and intensify our advocacy” as Saudi Arabia chairs the G-20 ahead of the meeting in Riyadh in November 2020.

Jack Letts, dubbed ‘Jihadi Jack’ by British media, has been detained for about two years after a 2014 trip to Syria where he helped the Islamic State

OTTAWA — The United Kingdom is shirking its share of the international community’s duty to help keep the world safe from terrorism, the federal government suggested Sunday after the British Home Office revoked the citizenship of a dual citizen imprisoned in Syria.

Jack Letts, a British-Canadian man who has been behind bars in a Kurdish prison since 2017, has been stripped of his British citizenship, the office of Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale confirmed in a sternly worded statement.

“Canada is disappointed that the United Kingdom has taken this unilateral action to off-load their responsibilities,” the statement said. “Terrorism knows no borders, so countries need to work together to keep each other safe.”

Letts, who was dubbed “Jihadi Jack” by the British media, has been detained for about two years after he travelled to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group.

A statement from the Home Office said revoking British citizenships is one way it counters terrorist threats. It said it does not comment on individual cases.

“Decisions on depriving a dual national of citizenship are based on substantial advice from officials, lawyers and the intelligence agencies and all available information,” the statement said.

Letts’ parents, John Letts and Sally Lane, were found guilty in June for funding terrorism when they tried to send him money. The couple, from Oxford, England, received suspended sentences of 12 months in prison.

John Letts wrote a letter to Canadian MPs last year that said his son is not a terrorist and deserves Canada’s protection. In his letter, Letts wrote that the money was to pay “people smugglers,”which he described as his son’s “only way out” of Syria.