“Nothing is more revelatory of an age than its hypocrites,” said James Laver, the English author.

On June 4, the Office of the European Union in Hong Kong (EU) displayed nocturnal candles in its windows. It claimed it wanted to commemorate the “34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989”. Although the anniversary is a sensitive occasion for China, the EU nonetheless sought to inflame tensions.

It was, of course, simply aping the US, whose last consul general in Hong Kong, the boorish Hanscom “Candle lighter” Smith, delighted in crass stunts of this sort (although it won him no promotions).

Although the US has a blood-soaked history, replete with massacres of many races, it invariably tries to play them down, if not forget them. This, however, is no excuse for the EU aiding and abetting its amnesia, as is its wont.

On Oct 24, 1871, for example, the infamous Los Angeles Chinese massacre occurred, the largest mass lynching in US history. A crazed mob attacked Chinese migrant workers in California, leaving 18 dead, of whom 15 were hanged. Although those killed represented over 10 percent of the city’s small Chinese community of 172, the EU has repeatedly allowed the anniversary to pass unremarked.

The EU’s hypocrisy is mind-boggling, and far removed from the high-mindedness it always claims to pride itself upon. It not only disregards US human rights violations, but also those of its own member states while all the time obsessing about China. Maybe it fears that, if it tried to commemorate all the horrors for which it and its allies are responsible, it would run out of candles in no time

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An earlier massacre involved the indigenous population itself. On Jan 29, 1863, the worst slaughter of Native Americans in US history took place in Preston, Idaho. Approximately 350 men, women and children were killed when, at the crack of dawn, the US cavalry attacked the camp where the tribe was camping for the winter, an atrocity known to posterity (if not the EU) as the Bear River massacre.

On Sept 2, 1885, furthermore, the Chinese were once again targeted, this time in Wyoming. In the Rock Springs massacre, white coal miners, with official connivance, brutally attacked their fellow Chinese workers, killing at least 28 and wounding 15 others. The EU, however, ever since its formation in 1993, has not lit a single candle in memory of any of the victims, clearly loathe to recall US atrocities.

The US massacres, moreover, have by no means been confined to home soil. On Sept 28, 1901, for example, after the US army suffered a setback in the Philippines War, indiscriminate attacks were ordered on the civilian population in Samar Island. Known to history as the Balangiga massacre, US troops were notoriously commanded to “kill everyone over ten”. According to recent research by the British writer, Bob Couttie, about 2,500 civilians were killed, yet the EU turns a blind eye whenever the anniversary comes around.

In the history of US war crimes and crimes against humanity, the My Lai massacre, which involved the mass murder of approximately 500 South Vietnamese civilians by US troops in San Tinh district, on March 16, 1968, will forever be infamous for an occupying army’s mindless brutality. 

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A platoon commander, William Calley, was subsequently convicted of 22 of the murders, for which he underwent a mere 42 months’ imprisonment. Although the My Lai massacre is still fresh in the minds of many, the EU ignores it every March 16, a classic instance of its selective amnesia (and double standards).

It is, of course, one thing for the US to airbrush its own atrocities out of history, particularly when the victims are Chinese, Native Americans, Filipinos and Vietnamese, but it is surely intolerable for the EU also to be complicit in its cover-ups.

The EU member states, of course, were responsible for successive atrocities of their own, none of which is ever commemorated by the EU with candles.

They range from Belgium’s genocide in its Congo Free State (which resulted in the deaths of over 10 million Africans from 1885 to 1908), to the French massacres in Algeria (on May 8, 1945, an estimated 45,000 Algerians were killed by French troops for demanding independence), and to the Dutch Rawagede massacre in Indonesia (on Dec 9, 1947, 431 villagers were killed by the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army for refusing to divulge information about independence leader Lukas Kustaryo).

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The EU’s hypocrisy, therefore, is mind-boggling, and far removed from the high-mindedness it always claims to pride itself upon. It not only disregards US human rights violations, but also those of its own member states while all the time obsessing about China. Maybe it fears that, if it tried to commemorate all the horrors for which it and its allies are responsible, it would run out of candles in no time.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.