Why do certain individual victims of tyrannical regimes become cause célèbres, worthy of dramatically altering U.S. foreign policy, while others disappear into the ether?
This question comes to mind in light of the curious case of Meng Hongwei. You would be forgiven if this is the first you are reading his name, which has been all but lost amid the feverish media coverage of the disappearance and premeditated murder of Islamist Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi government henchmen. But concurrent with the Khashoggi affair, Meng, the president of Interpol, also disappeared, and may have succumbed to a similarly grim fate at the hands of Chinese henchmen.
Let me repeat that: The president of Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization, disappeared. Meng left his home in France on Sept. 25 for a trip concluding in China. Meng has not been seen or heard from since, save for reportedly texting his wife an ominous emoji of a knife.
Only two weeks later did we receive the Chinese authority’s version of what transpired. The Chinese Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) — as draconian a bureaucracy as it sounds — released a one-line statement announcing that Meng was being detained under “suspicion of violating the law,” purportedly for taking bribes. Interpol received a statement saying Meng would be resigning as president immediately, and he was summarily replaced.
His wife claims Chinese individuals have threatened her as well. She believes Meng may be dead, although Chinese authorities claim to be holding a letter of his, addressed to her, as evidence he is alive. Meng claims unnamed parties have asked to deliver the letter to her alone, something she has understandably refused.
There are a number of parallels between Meng and Khashoggi, which makes it all the more interesting that the former’s disappearance caused an international uproar, while the latter’s disappearance has been largely disappeared. For one, Meng and Khashoggi were both prominent figures with deep ties at the highest ranks of the authoritarian regimes for which they served.
Meng is not just another one of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese held in “Re-education through Labor” camps, or behind bars for committing crimes like practicing one’s faith or dissenting from the state religion of Communism. He was a loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for more than 40 years, working his way up through the “law enforcement” ranks.
For his loyal work for the CCP, he rose to the senior position of Chinese vice-minister of public security, where he had been serving since 2004, and head of the China Coast Guard, a position to which he was named in 2013. Meng was elected president of Interpol in 2016. The first such president from China, this role put Meng in a powerful seat to do the bidding of...Read More HERE
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