Hong Kong extradition and US immigration protests: two issues that show the people still have plenty of fight in them

People are right to see both action to amend Hong Kong extradition laws and the US’ current immigration policy as betrayals of principle, and their protests show how they will respond to a government that oversteps the mark

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Protesters flood Causeway Bay demanding the withdrawal of the extradition amendment and resignation of the chief executive. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 3:00am, 18 Jun 2019Updated: 4:14am, 18 Jun 2019

How should citizens react when “big government” does a bad thing that screams out for correction? One approach is to slip into denial and imagine that nothing happened, because leaders are apt to err and the best thing for your mental health is to look the other way.

This might be dubbed the urbane British approach, a kind of permanent melancholia of the polity. But in Hong Kong and the United States, people maintain reservoirs of psychic energy to fight for what they believe. Two dramatic events illuminate that a lot of fight is left in both places.

In the US, the Trump government’s incarceration of more than 2,500 children from families detained at the US southern border proceeds apace.

Forget that a federal court has ruled against the practice of tearing kids from their deported parents. Forget that children have died in custody in consequence of the US’ “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Forget that the health conditions of thousands remain a mystery due to their inaccessibility to outside evaluators.

That such an appalling policy is happening in the “land of the free” (itself the loudest critic of other countries’ human rights) upsets many Americans.

So there’s a big fight on at the UN Human Rights Council, which is to rule on formal complaints about the border internments. Outside, a major protest was planned, led by the American Federation of Teachers, arm in arm with others, including Mexico’s largest teachers’ trade union.