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Five Hong Kong democracy protesters who reportedly fled to Taiwan have arrived in the United States intending to seek asylum, an activist group said on Saturday.
Their escape follows the mass arrest of democracy figures in Hong Kong under a new national security law that is part of a mounting crackdown by China on the financial hub.
<p>The Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC), a US-based group, said it had welcomed a group of young activists to America this week and their journey had been "arduous and perilous".</p><p>"The activists, all under the age of 30, took part in the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, faced protest-related arrests and charges, and fled the city by boat last July," Samuel Chu, founder of HKDC, told AFP.</p><p>"I am relieved and overjoyed to welcome them to the United States and to assist them as they seek asylum and a new life," Chu added.</p><p>Through a statement issued by the HKDC, the five activists now in exile said their hearts have been "filled with anxiety and all kinds of emotions" from the moment they left Hong Kong. </p><p>Taiwanese media in August reported that the five tried to flee to the self-ruled island in late July and were intercepted by its authorities.</p><p>Officials in Taiwan have since kept a low profile regarding the case, declining to comment.</p><p>After massive democracy protests across Hong Kong in 2019 in which more than 11,000 people were arrested, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law late last June to silence dissent.</p><p>In August, another group of 12 Hong Kong activists, including one arrested under the national security law, made an attempt to flee by speedboat to Taiwan but were arrested by Chinese coastguards.</p><p>Last month a Chinese court jailed 10 of these 12 fugitives for up to three years for "organising and participating in an illegal border crossing".</p><p>Chu said that the five Hong Kongers could have easily perished at sea or met the same fate as the "Hong Kong 12" without the help from ardent supporters who provided shelter and protection along the way.</p><p>"Their desperate effort exemplifies the rapidly deteriorating human rights condition and growing humanitarian crisis Hong Kong is in right now," Chu said, adding that the options for safe passage are limited.</p><p>At least 50 former Hong Kong protesters applied for asylum in various jurisdictions before the coronavirus pandemic ended most international travel last year. Hundreds more have relocated to democratic Taiwan.</p>
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US authorities carried out the 13th and final federal execution of Donald Trump's presidency Saturday, media reports said, less than a week before the White House is taken over by Democrat Joe Biden, who opposes the death penalty.
Dustin Higgs, a 48-year-old Black man, was executed by lethal injection at the federal penitentiary in Terre-Haute in Indiana hours after the US Supreme Court rejected a stay of execution, the New York Times reported.
<p>Higgs was pronounced dead at 1:23 am local time, the Times said, citing a statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.</p><p>In January 1996, Higgs invited three young women to his apartment near the capital Washington, along with two of his friends. When one of the young women rebuffed his advances, he offered to drive them home but instead stopped in an isolated federal nature reserve outside the city.</p><p>According to the Department of Justice, he then ordered one of his friends to shoot the three women. In 2000, he was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder. The man who pulled the trigger was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole.</p><p>"It is arbitrary and inequitable to punish Mr Higgs more severely than the actual killer," said Higgs' lawyer Shawn Nolan, in a plea for clemency addressed to President Trump at the end of January.</p><p>But the Republican president, a staunch defender of the death penalty, did not follow up. On the contrary, his administration fought in court to be able to proceed with the execution before he leaves the White House next week.</p><p>A court had ordered a stay of execution on the grounds that Higgs contracted Covid-19 and that, with his damaged lungs, he would likely suffer cruelly at the time of an injection of pentobarbital.</p><p>The Department of Justice immediately appealed and won the case.</p><p>The final bid to halt the execution then went before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority -- firmly established by Trump appointees -- has systematically given the green light to federal executions since the summer.</p><h1>'This is not justice'</h1><p>The Trump administration resumed federal executions in July following a 17-year hiatus, carrying them out at an unprecedented rate.</p><p>Among the 12 people put to death since then was, for the first time in nearly 70 years, a woman -- Lisa Montgomery, executed Tuesday despite doubts about her mental health.</p><p>At the same time, states postponed all executions to avoid spreading the virus.</p><p>"This is not justice," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting note to Friday's decision by the Supreme Court. "After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions, the Government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully."</p><p>"When it did not, this Court should have. It has not. Because the Court continues this pattern today, I dissent."</p><p>President-elect Biden, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, has vowed to work with Congress to try to abolish the death penalty at the federal level.</p><p>Democratic lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill to that effect and since their party has regained control of the Senate, it stands a chance of being adopted.</p><p>In a statement Saturday the American Civil Liberties Union called on Biden to commute the sentences of all those on federal death row and remove the death penalty from all pending trials.</p><p>"This swift action is the only adequate response to the degrading and unconstitutional execution spree and to ensure that the federal government is never able to do this again," it said.</p>
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Let's start with the basics. The US Constitution establishes a system of checks and balances consisting of three equal branches of government – legislative (Article I), executive (Article II), and judicial (Article III). On January 6, 2021, the head of the executive branch, Donald Trump, incited a mob to attack the legislative branch and then did nothing to stop it. As a result, Congress was unable to perform its constitutional duty, which was to certify the election of the candidate who beat him – President-elect Joe Biden.
That's an impeachable offense for which the Senate can and should convict Trump and bar him from ever holding federal office again.
<p><strong>The Facts are Undisputed</strong></p> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>Pre-election polls showed Trump losing decisively to Biden. So months before November 3, Trump launched a pre-emptive attack on the election itself by claiming that he could lose only if it was "rigged."</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>Trump <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/trumps-coup/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lost</a> the election by more than seven million popular votes and 74 electoral votes. Continuing his assault on the right of the people to select their president, he refused to concede, claiming falsely that the election had been "stolen" from him. "Stop the Steal" became the rallying cry.</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>Trump and his allies then filed more than <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/trumps-coup/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">60 unsuccessful court challenges</a> seeking to reverse the outcome of a legitimate election. In <em>none</em> of those cases did any court find any evidence of the widespread fraud that he blamed repeatedly for his loss. Even Trump's loyal attorney general, William Barr, who went in search of such fraud, <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/inciting-insurrection-it-wasnt-just-trump/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">found nothing</a> worth pursuing.</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>When the courts and Barr refused to call the election into question, Trump <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/trumps-coup/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pressured state election</a> officials to overturn the will of 81 million voters who wanted him out of office.</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>As the date for congressional certification of Biden's win approached, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-pence-breakuo-capitol-riot/2021/01/11/6a6aa052-5357-11eb-89bc-7f51ceb6bd57_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pressured</a> Vice President Mike Pence – as presiding officer of the session – to act unconstitutionally and decline to certify the vote.</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>When Pence refused, Trump spoke for more than an hour to an organized mob of thousands whom he had called to the capital on the day of certification for a "Stop the Steal" rally. He continued to lie about the election, <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/insurrection-timeline-first-the-coup-and-then-the-cover-up-updated/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">saying</a>:</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>"We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved."</li></ul> </li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>"We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election."</li></ul> </li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>"I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election… All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people."</li></ul> </li><li>As the congressional certification process began, Trump concluded his speech by inviting the mob to join him in marching to the Capitol. "We fight like hell," he said. "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore… Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun… We're going to the Capitol. We're going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."</li><li>But Trump didn't walk to the Capitol as he had promised. Instead, he watched the violence unfold on television from the White House where officials reported that <a href="https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1347023890959228933" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">he was</a> "borderline enthusiastic because it meant the certification was being denied." In fact, as the mob was overrunning the Capitol, Trump made a phone call to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), urging him to delay certification further by endorsing numerous frivolous objections.</li><li>After the mob had been inside the Capitol for more than two hours, Trump finally <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-to-mob-that-stormed-capitol-you-have-to-go-home-now/2021/01/06/515e227c-0a1b-4397-91cd-f4542bb9ec0e_video.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> a scripted video. It opened with inflammatory rhetoric reiterating his lies.</li><li>"I know your pain. I know you're hurt," he began. "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side."</li><li>After telling his supporters to go home in peace, he continued, "There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil."</li></ul> <p>The Law is Clear</p> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>Impeachable conduct – "Treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors" – encompasses a defeated presidential candidate's attempted <em>coup d'etat </em>against the legitimate constitutional government of the United States. Constitutional scholars <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/09/the-case-for-a-swift-impeachment/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">across the political spectrum</a> have echoed Prof. Michael Stokes Parkman's <a href="https://thebulwark.com/the-constitutional-and-moral-imperative-of-immediate-impeachment/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">view</a>: "If Trump's misconduct is not impeachable, nothing is."</li><li>Proof of a crime is not required for impeachment, but Trump probably committed several federal felonies. "<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Seditious conspiracy</a>" is an agreement by at least two people to hinder the execution of federal law or to seize federal property. The agreement <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-07/donald-trump-joe-biden-riot-congress-impeachment-25th-amendment-sedition-incite-rebellion" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">need not be express</a> and can be inferred by willful participation in the unlawful plan with intent to further it. Conviction can lead to imprisonment for up to 20 years. "<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2383" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Inciting rebellion or insurrection</a>" against the authority of the United States can result a 10-year prison term.</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>The <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/felony_murder_doctrine" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">felony-murder rule</a> might even apply. In some circumstances, a person who engages in a violent felony can be held responsible for deaths that occur during the course of that crime. For example, suppose two people try to rob a bank and a bank security guard pulls out a gun and kills one robber while the other is waiting in the getaway car. <em>The driver of the getaway car could be held liable for the death of his fellow robber</em>. Trump's incitement led to five deaths, including the mob's murder of a Capitol Police officer.</li></ul> <p>What's the Defense?</p><p>Trump is throwing everything against the wall in the hope that something will stick. Nothing will. His defenders rely principally on the First Amendment, but there is no constitutional right to incite an insurrection. According to the US Supreme Court, the Constitution <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/395/444" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">does not protect</a> conduct that is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action."</p> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>Although Trump claims that his January 6 speech to the mob was "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-air-force-one-departure-joint-base-andrews-md-011221/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">totally appropriate</a>," it wasn't, especially in the context of the speeches <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/953286681" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">preceding</a> his. Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called for "trial by combat." Donald Trump Jr. told the mob, "If you're going to be the zero and not the hero, we're coming for you, and we're going to have a good time doing it."</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>Members of the mob were already heading toward the Capitol when Trump himself <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/capitol-insurrection-visual-timeline/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">exhorted</a> them, "We fight like hell. If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore… Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun… We're going to the Capitol. We're going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country…"</li></ul> <ul class="ee-ul"><li>But even if Trump's words and deeds did not meet the Supreme Court's test, the First Amendment still wouldn't save him. High-level government officials can be held accountable for their speech in ways that private citizens cannot. As Prof. Ilya Somin <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/08/the-first-amendment-doesnt-protect-trump-against-impeachment-for-his-role-in-inciting-the-assault-on-the-capitol/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">notes</a>, "Donald Trump himself has fired numerous cabinet officials and other subordinates because they expressed views he didn't like." And for the same reasons that impeachment does not require proof of a president's criminality, the fact that his speech might not lead to civil or criminal liability is not a defense anyway.</li></ul> <p>During the House debate on impeachment, some Republicans complained that the process had not involved hearings and witnesses. There was no need. Trump's impeachable conduct occurred in plain sight. Newspapers and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-attempted-coup-federal-law-enforcement-capitol-police-2021-1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">allied governments</a> around the world correctly labeled the attack on the Capitol an attempted coup.</p><p>Finally, unlike a criminal proceeding, conviction in the Senate does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The purpose of impeachment is to get a president out of office and then, by subsequent majority vote in the Senate, assure that he never returns.</p><p>Saving American Democracy Begins with Truth and Accountability</p><p>Most Republicans argue that Trump's impeachment undermines efforts to unify the country. The opposite is true.</p><p>A US president encouraged a mob to attack a co-equal branch of government and then watched the violence unfold for hours on television. But in the eyes of most Republicans, Trump remains blameless. Although <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3686" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">70 percent</a> of the GOP believe that the mob was undermining democracy and must be held accountable, 70 percent also say that the president who incited it is somehow protecting democracy. Even more of them – 87 percent – say that Trump should not be removed from office.</p><p>Without accountability for subverting the nation's political system, unity is impossible. That requires a common understanding and acceptance of <em>facts.</em> America's body politic cannot heal without first ridding itself of the infection that Trump's lies have caused. Impeachment is a necessary first step in that cleansing process.</p><p>As Trump and his allies dissemble in the days ahead, remember that the vote to impeach him was bipartisan. Ten Republicans, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) – the GOP's No. 3 leader in the House and a reliable Trump defender throughout his presidency, finally broke away from Trump's spell. On January 12, Rep. Cheney <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/liz-cheney-trump-impeachment-statement-458394" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">declared</a>:</p><p><em>"On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic. </em></p><p><em>"Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. </em></p><p><em>"I will vote to impeach the President."</em></p><p>The prosecution rests.</p>
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