Political Quotes

“I rise today with a heaviness in my heart for what we have seen happening in the last 36 hours in Hong Kong. Freedom-loving people in Hong Kong for the last 23 years have known basic, fundamental human and natural rights, and we see the Communist Party of China coming in and trying to steal their dignity and to steal their freedom. They live in real and tangible fear of what is going to happen tonight and this weekend and next week. Yesterday was July 1. July 1 is the anniversary 23 years ago of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Under that agreement, the Communist Party of China made a pledge not just to Hongkongers and not just to the British but to the watching world, and they said that it would guarantee--they would guarantee--a certain level of autonomy and freedom to the Hong Kong community and that Hong Kong would not be forced to live under the kind of despotism that the mainland Chinese are forced to experience. The Communist Party announced to the world, in signing that declaration, that Hongkongers would be retaining a lot of freedom. Well, since that handover in 1997 and, especially since 2003, when there was another attempted national security law debated, the people of Hong Kong have been holding pro-democracy protests and celebrations every year on the July 1 holiday. Annually, on July 1, they have reminded the world of what the pledge was of the Communist Party in that agreement of July 1997.…”