Comment by rbecker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rbecker | Hacker News Reader

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You should watch the accompanying (short) video. The claim is that, knowing ahead of time who will be present, China pressures the speakers into cancelling, which, it is claimed, has worked at least a few times.

> Also, the two sources you've given me are a tabloid, and Fox News. They are not anymore credible.

I provided three additional sources, not two, for a total of four. All reporting on the same whistleblower - a former UN human rights lawyer, so not someone that should be casually dismissed just because you dislike the media broadcasting her claims. But I will humor you, and add yet more sources (though I am sure you will be able to find something objectionable about each):

https://twitter.com/EmmaReillyTweet/status/13214608289698816... - the whistleblower herself, posting court documents.

https://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Peter-A-Gallo/Universal-Human-Ri... - OHCHR was vehemently denying any having done anything wrong in handing over the names of Chinese human rights activists to the Chinese government or the possibility that this may have been a factor in the arrest and subzequent death in custody of a prominent human rights lawyer

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/congress-probes-cla...

https://www.wionews.com/world/whistleblower-accuses-un-human...

https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/un-watch-ngo-un-gave-c...

https://unwatch.org/ngo-u-n-gave-china-names-rights-activist...

I'm not casually dismissing them.

Tell me, if China already knows the names of those people enough to suspect that they will go, and already has control of their families, and they are going to a public event, do you think that they will only threaten doing so if they have certainty they will come?

Because trust me, that is just not how this works. Authoritarian governments, if they decide to act in such ways, will go in contact with you and let you know the consequence of what you will do to your families. There is no need for this endanger anyone, because they already have the name.

On this basis, I agree that the possibility that this was a factor in the arrest of anyone is essentially zero.

Because, for China to ask if someone is going to be on the committee, they must already know about that person, and if they know about that person, they will already do their best to arrest them or threaten them.

> https://twitter.com/EmmaReillyTweet/status/13214608289698816... - the whistleblower herself, posting court documents.

... related to her wrongful termination complaint, arguing that she shouldn't have been fired for leaking information in 2013. So either those documents are irrelevant except to show why she is a former UN human rights lawyer (evidently her complaint was unsuccessful) or revealing the attendees of events in advance is exactly what she leaked back then, in which case it's a bit suspicious that she suddenly got multiple outlets to report on it only 7 years after the fact.

> I will humor you, and add yet more sources (though I am sure you will be able to find something objectionable about each)

The problem common to all of them is that they're not independent sources, but just different write-ups of the same person's statements, namely that former UN employee. Adding more links isn't the same as adding more information.

> not independent sources, but just different write-ups of the same person's statements

As I explicitly noted. I added them because sudosysgen was complaining about i24news/Fox/Express not being good enough, and not the whistleblower herself.

I was implying that large, reputable outlets did not pick up because they could not corroborate.

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