August 3, 2022, 9:18am
A bookseller who fled Hong Kong because of Chinese repression is going to plead his case to Nancy Pelosi during her headline-making visit to Taiwan. Lam Wing-kee, a longtime human rights activist and bookstore owner in Hong Kong, was jailed for eight months in 2015 for selling books critical of Chinese leadership. As Lam told Reuters, in reference to today’s meeting with the Speaker of the House:
I want to discuss with her whether there is a possibility for the U.S. government to help those who cannot return to Hong Kong and who may not be able to obtain identity cards in Taiwan, to help them to go to the United States.
Of course, Pelosi’s own country doesn’t have a particularly good recent track record of free and open discourse, as state and local book bans continue apace. Scarier still is a recent lawsuit brought by a Virginia lawmaker against Barnes & Noble, for selling “obscene” books to minors.
This is how frogs get boiled.