I think the first part of what you said is spot on (confusing actual freedom and openness), but I don't think the "not being open the other way around" is really the case.
However, to the first point, a good example is the court system, where people keep touting "rule of law" and judicial transparency as hallmarks of "freedom". The idea is that if there is adherence to rules, then the authorities cannot weaponize it against the people (basically one of the tenets of the protests). However, anyone with even half a critical brain cell would know this is a joke.
In Canada, look no further than Meng Wenzhou, US essentially created sanctions (not even applicable to Canada) and requested extradition and prompted her arrest. There is the argument, "Well, she gets to live in a $15 million mansion, that's no kind of detention", or "She is out on bail, proof that the system works", but these are non-sequiturs, because it assumes that the initial arrest was not prompted by politics in the first place. Also, really, the fact that her wealth can buy her all those special privileges really only makes more of a mockery of the system, any poor person with a crap lawyer would just rot in jail for who knows how long?
It goes even further than this, wealthy Paul Singer can weaponize the US court system to bring an entire country to it's knees (Argentina), and misery to its denizens. Corporations can bring endless lawsuits/legal threats to common people over stupid things like MP3 sharing. All of this is "legal", but who thinks it is "just"? So really, is injustice not oppression?
To your final point, Western self-righteousness is just a political tool. It is essentially just the modern replacement for Christianity in neo-colonialist doctrine. Instead of "Gospel and Heaven", it is "Democracy and Human Rights". Again, it is built on a logical fallacy, that the cushy life we have in Western countries is because of their respect for these principles. Wrong, it is because Western countries are wealthy countries. Even if you come to to these countries with "nothing" (as many immigrant success stories begin), there is a capital base or education base that exists for you to exploit that simply does not exist in a poor country. Politics has nothing to do with it.
I think for human rights to be exploited in this way is especially sad. Western politicians love to make the case that democracy is a human right. Honestly, if you have nothing to eat, no clean water to drink, no roof over your head, I don't think you care who you can vote for. If you cannot live, then there are no human rights. Western politicians exploit people's basic ignorance of the world outside their comfort zone to push this agenda. PRC is so vilified, read any comment on a news story, and its filled with near-racist invective. Yet how many of these people have actually been to China? or how many just dismiss it as "a communist hellhole"? If they have been to China, how many have been out of the cities and into the countryside? It's still so poor, a family friend who does charity work showed me pictures of an orphan collect branches to burn for heating. Simply collapsing the government won't help these people, it certainly did not help the people of Libya.
Relating back to HK, it's so obvious to see the exploitation. Western politicians constantly egging on the rioters. Calling them "non-violent" (Alexandra Oscaio Cortez tweet:
) only further encouraging this destruction. They exploit the ignorance and naivete of youth to push their own agenda. Meanwhile the entire city suffers. Even the peaceful people who legitimately want to preserve autonomy under 1C2S suffers (probably these people suffer the most). Media constantly pushing the narrative that the central government is "suffocating" HK, they are the worst. They have actually literally done nothing (somewhat to the consternation of their supporters in the city). Honestly, even if there is no active American agitation through intelligence agencies (which I don't believe, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist), the media did the job for them.
