A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Friday urged the administration of US President Donald Trump to suspend sales of munitions and crowd-control equipment to Hong Kong police, which has been accused of using excessive force against anti-government protesters.
Hong Kong democracy advocate Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) this week on Twitter shared photographs of teargas shells and rubber bullets he said were used by police against protesters.
US representatives Christopher Smith and James McGovern, chairs of the US House of Representatives Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, made their request in a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We ask that you suspend future sales of munitions and crowd and riot control equipment to the Hong Kong Police Force and publicly announce that the US will not contribute to the internal repression of peaceful protest in Hong Kong,” they wrote.
They also urged the secretaries to push back “against the Hong Kong and Chinese governments’ efforts to characterize the demonstrations as ‘riots’ and to blame the US for political instability which they alone created.”
The US Department of State and the US Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“All these weapons are imported from the United States. Given the innumerable proof of police brutality in recent protests, all countries should call a halt to the sale of arms to the notorious Hong Kong Police,” Wong said on Twitter.
Thousands of civil servants on Friday joined the anti-government protests in Hong Kong for the first time since they started two months ago, defying a warning from the authorities to remain politically neutral.
Protests against a proposed bill that would allow people to be extradited to stand trial in China have grown increasingly violent, with police accused of excessive use of force and failing to protect protesters from suspected gang attacks.
The human rights commission is composed of more than 40 members of the US House.
Smith is Republican and McGovern a Democrat.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS