Mike Pompeo, human rights activist?
by digby
Chinese leaders must “make a full public accounting” of the 1989 crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen Square, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday.
“On the 29th anniversary of the violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations in and around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, we remember the tragic loss of innocent lives,” Pompeo said. “As Liu Xiaobo wrote in his 2010 Nobel Peace Prize speech, delivered in absentia, ‘the ghosts of June 4th have not yet been laid to rest.’”
“We join others in the international community in urging the Chinese government to make a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing; to release those who have been jailed for striving to keep the memory of Tiananmen Square alive; and to end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families,” Pompeo said.
Or is he just trolling to gin up more global antagonism? That’s all true. But it’s surprising coming from this administration that loves the strongmen. His boss certainly has different ideas about all that:
Donald Trump still thinks the Chinese government showed “strength” when they killed more than 200 people to crush pro-democracy student protests in 1989 — but he’s not saying he agrees with what the regime did.
“That doesn’t mean I was endorsing that,” Trump said. “I said that was a strong, powerful government. They kept down the riot, it was a horrible thing.”
Trump told Playboy in a 1990 interview: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
They’re all over the place creating chaos and “disruption” which seems to be a catch-phrase they all interpret as guaranteed to create a wonderful result.
That’s wrong. This isn’t a neat new ap that will change the dating market. Sometimes disruption causes millions of people to die.
Maybe Pompeo’s words sound credible to the Chinese. But I doubt it. They know trolling when they see it.
.