defrog | Entries tagged with long gone in hong kong

Today marks the 23^rd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to the PRC under the One Country Two Systems arrangement.

Alternatively, it’s Year 0 of the second handover to China in which One Country Two Systems has been changed to One Country Two Nearly Identical Systems.

Which means I might go to jail for posting this. Or not. Let’s see, shall we?

1. As expected, Beijing approved and enacted its national security law (NSL) for HK yesterday. Characteristically, they released the text of the national security law last night. In the middle of the night. In Chinese only. And only after the law was already in force.

Several people have already translated it into English. You can read this explainer if you like, or this more detailed translation.

Anyway, for the most part it's as bad as we suspected. And even where it doesn't sound so bad, there are two caveats: (1) the wording is intentionally vague to allow for very loose interpretation of what counts as an offense, and (2) the law basically says that Beijing has final say on what does and doesn't count, and that the law supersedes any HK law it might come into conflict with.

So for all intents and purposes all of the human rights violations that regularly happen in mainland China in the name of national security can now happen here.

Carrie Lam, for one, seems mighty pleased.

As well she should – Beijing has fixed the protest problem she created in the first place, and now she can go around blathering about how HK is harmonious and safe now that all political opposition has been suppressed.

2. The chilling effect is real – even before the details of the law was revealed, some people were taking cover. Which evidently was the point. Anyway, two of the opposition parties founded after the 2014 umbrella occupation have disbanded, some protesters are deleting their Twitter accounts, church leaders who opposed the NSL have deleted their posts, some “yellow economy” (pro-protest) restaurants have closed, and Chickeeduck is being evicted from a mall. And all that before we even knew what was in the law.

President Xi Jinping is smiling so hard right now his face may just freeze that way.

3. The HK police are also happy because why wouldn’t they be? They’ve already been greenlighted to do anything they want to anyone they don’t like.

4. Carrie Lam’s predecessor CY Leung is so happy he’s now offering bounties of up to HK$1 million for anyone who provides clues that aid the arrest of "national security law offenders", or to those who have information on "anyone who has fled the city".

Put another way, CY sees the NSL as his ticket to get revenge on every last pro-Democracy politician and activist who gave him crap while he was CE. (Indeed, a lot of his sideline commentary in the last year has included everything from the usual foreign conspiracy theories and saying the police should use even more violence on protesters to hoping the NSL would be retroactive to the point where anyone who staged a protest during his admin would get life in prison.)

5. Since 2003, we’ve typically marked July 1 with two activities: (1) a flag-raising ceremony that no one attends unless they’re paid to be there and (2) an all-purpose protest march covering whatever grievances the people have that year.

The latter is now illegal under the NSL, although police had already banned this year’s march under the COVID-19 social distancing rules that at this point exist solely for the purpose of enabling police to ban protests. Maybe now that they don’t need that excuse, they’ll drop the rules altogether?

Activists are determined to march anyway. It would be great if 2 million people (or more) showed up, though that’s unlikely. Anyway, the police have already prepared brand new warning flags for them.

[The running gag on Twitter is that protesters will be teargassed, beaten and arrested before they can finish reading the warning. Ha ha.]

6. As for what this all means for the protest movement, I suppose that depends on what happens next. There’s been a lot of chatter about how the protesters went too far and ended up accelerating the arrival of 2047 (the year our SAR status was to expire) and gained nothing. Others say the protests have worked in a broader sense because it not only exposed the corrupt violence inherent in the system and proved that the HK govt was always a Beijing puppet, but also forced the sort of crackdown needed to rally international pressure on Beijing, who frankly has been throwing its weight around a lot in recent years since Xi became President.

While we’re waiting for that to happen, I like to think that resistance in HK will take smaller, subtler forms – mini flash mob performances of the alt-national anthem, midnight graffiti, tiny acts of defiance to keep hope alive. But for now I think a lot of people will go silent, if only to regroup and figure out what to do next.

7. Since people have asked:

We are fine, and I don’t expect the current situation to impact us personally for the time being. The general wisdom (such as it is) is that the HK govt/Beijing will slap NSL vengeance on prominent opposition figures first – likely the ones who have already been arrested during the course of the protests. They’re the ones who will be prosecuted and jailed first to serve as examples to the rest of us. The objective is rule of fear, and the authorities will be just as happy if the average malcontents and dissenters either shut up or leave HK altogether – if only because jailing over 2 million people is time consuming, expensive and not the kind of thing you want to be doing when HK’s unemployment rate is as high as it is.

So for the near future, at least, I don’t think I have anything to worry about beyond having the occasional post deleted or flagged. Beyond that, who knows?

Developing (obviously) ….

Under the gun,

This is dF

EDITED TO ADD [3:30pm]: Well that didn't take long. The police have made their first arrest under the NSL. The offense: allegedly carrying a flag saying "Hong Kong Independence".

Current Mood: busy
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Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1639518.html

What a year it’s been.

Not 2020 (although yes, that too) – I mean the last 12 months here in Hong Kong.

One year ago today, over 1 million people marched on the streets demanding the withdrawal of a proposed Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) that would allow Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to mainland China. Despite the fact that it was the largest turnout for a protest of any kind since 1989, the govt said no. And so the anti-ELAB movement began – and of course blossomed into something much, much bigger.

And one year later, where are we now?

Technically, the protests themselves tapered off after December 2019 for a number of reasons – COVID-19, of course, but I think it was also due to two key events: (1) the District Council elections, in which pro-democracy candidates took every district except one, and (2) the Battle of PolyU, which was so intense (and traumatic for most of the protesters there) that relatively few people fancy the prospect of a rematch.

Also, the police have taken advantage of the lull to formulate a more proactive strategy of ruthlessly shutting down protests before they can rev up into something bigger. All anti-govt protests are essentially considered illegal now, and disproportionate violence, mass arrests of innocent people and attacks on journalists are justified by the police force’s massive propaganda campaign portraying the protest movement in general as a foreign-funded terrorist campaign.

Which in itself is the justification Beijing is now using to impose a national security law on HK for the explicit purpose of enabling HK and Beijing to deal with protesters the same way Beijing deals with dissent of any kind – secret trials, forced confessions, re-education camps, basically everything China already does to Uighurs in Xinjiang. The NSL not only effectively kills off One Country Two Systems as a human-rights/democracy preservation mechanism (which was generally the point of it), it also changes the game in terms of the protests. It’s one thing to put pressure on the HK govt, which at least has a modicum of democracy and free speech. It’s quite another to do the same to a viciously totalitarian dictatorship that’s out to make a very clear point: we run this dump, we will always have the last word, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Sure, this was probably always true in the long term. But we thought we had more time before Beijing went for the nuclear option. Turns out not.

So the two big questions before us are:

1. What now?

That depends who you ask. This piece in SCMP – in which Jeffie Lam interviewed protesters about their next move – is somewhat gloomy. This piece from The Guardian reflects a more defiant tone.

But the general gist is this: overall the protest movement isn’t ready to give up yet – we’ve come too far and too much is at stake. Also, Beijing’s aggressiveness essentially proves the protesters were right all along about its true intentions and the HK govt’s complicity. But no one’s really sure what the next move should be.

One ray of hope is the upcoming LegCo elections in September, which could go the way of the District Council elections. Meanwhile, many business sectors have been setting up unions for the express purpose of organizing strikes to pressure the govt.

Still, Beijing and the HK govt undoubtedly have plans for this too. We can safely assume the HK govt will do what it can to rig the LegCo elections in its favour by disqualifying as many pro-democracy candidates as possible (and indeed, it may be no coincidence that the NSL is expected to be in force just before the election). As for the strikes, the NSL will probably be used to deal with those – Carrie Lam is certainly displeased with the idea.

As for the street protests, those will probably continue – indeed, there was one this evening in Central to mark the anniversary, which of course the police shut down quickly – but they’re not likely to happen at the frequency or scale of 2019. Hong Kong Civil Right Front is planning a major march on July 1 (a.k.a. Handover Day), and the massive defiance of a ban on the Tiananmen Square candlelight vigil was an encouraging sign. But for the most part, I think street protests will be relatively limited.

Still, there are other ways to resist besides massive street marches. We’ve also seen the return of “sing with you” flash-mob protests in malls where students show up to sing the alternate national anthem, which also tend to get shut down swiftly. But every little bit helps.

Stephen Vines points out here that the one thing we have going for us is that history is not on the side of autocracies. Sooner or later, they go too far once they believe in their own infallibility:

… all autocracies, especially those in the modern age, have feet of clay. Their reliance on oppression to retain their position is inflexible and belies the weakness inherent in a system that only has one way of clinging to power.

Put simply, autocracies generally don’t last. It may take decades, but inevitably that weakness can be exploited if you poke at it long enough. You just gotta keep poking.

So whatever form resistance takes, the important thing is to keep resisting. Size and scale don’t matter – what matters is to undermine their authority any way you can (peacefully, when possible).

Sing songs in malls; stage work strikes when you can; support businesses who support the cause; wear black t-shirts; document brutality and injustice where you see it; make art; be creative. Go underground if you have to, but don’t stop. The one thing Beijing and Carrie Lam want more than anything in this world is for us to sit down, shut up and obey. Do none of these things.

Resist,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Yello, "Angel No"

I’m late with this, I know. But in case you hadn't heard, the Hong Kong police banned this year’s candlelight vigil to observe the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

We held one anyway.

BACKSTORY: Hong Kong has held a rally every June 4 since 1990 to remember the massacre and demand the Chinese govt admit the truth of what happened. This year was the first year the police denied permission to hold it – ostensibly because of COVID-19 social distancing restrictions, but anyone with any sense knows that’s not the only reason. We know that the restrictions have been used specifically to target any anti-govt protest gathering, even ones that don’t require police permission and do comply with social distancing rules.

And of course, with the national security law scheduled to be shoved down our throats by Beijing sometime soon, we know full well that the vigil will be banned anyway, so there’s no reason to assume this year’s ban just happened to coincide with the COVID restrictions.

As it happens, the vigil organizers expected this, and came up with a back-up plan – the core group would go to Victoria Park (the usual location for the vigil), have a small scaled down ceremony, and broadcast it live on YouTube. Meanwhile, different districts could hold their own small observances – otherwise everyone who wanted to participate could light candles wherever they were at 8pm and watch the broadcast.

Which is what the bride and I eventually did.

Anyway, the police did what we expected them to do – set up metal barriers all around Victoria Park first thing in the morning to close it off to the public. Around 7pm, the organizers showed up, pulled down the barriers and proceeded as scheduled.

Thousands showed up to join them.

Notice the social distancing.

Interestingly, the police – for once – didn't intervene. There was a pointless skirmish in Mong Kok afterwards, but a relatively minor by HKPF standards, especially considering the protesters essentially outright defied their ban.

Mind you, I'm not giving the police credit for restraint. My hypothesis is that they only held back because (1) the whole world was watching, and (2) Beijing and the HK govt are in the middle of a global propaganda campaign trying to convince the world that the upcoming NSL is nothing to be afraid of and HK will still be all about freedoms and the NSL. Cracking down on a vigil remembering another crackdown on freedom is the last thing they need right now – optics-wise, anyway.

That said, I expect the other shoe to drop eventually. At the very least I think they'll arrest the HK Alliance organizers for illegal assembly etc. Not right away, of course – remember that those 15 activists were arrested for protests that happened months ago. They may wait until after the NSL is passed to inflict maximum damage (pro-Beijing figures have suggested the NSL will be grandfathered to apply it to past activities before the law is enacted – I would be surprised if it isn’t, and we know exactly who the first targets are going to be in that scenario).

Either way, the police are going to make sure the organizers pay for this dearly. And anyone else they decide to punish for showing up.

Anyway, if this has to be the last Tiananmen Square vigil in HK, it was a great way to go out as a massive show of resistance to the coming crackdown.

BONUS TRACK: Oh by the way, the HK govt celebrated June 4 by passing a law that makes mocking, booing or otherwise disrespecting China’s national anthem a crime. Really. The punishment is up to three years in jail.

The govt says it doesn’t impinge on anyone’s freedom of expression because it’s still legal to do it in your own head – just not out loud.

Light a fire,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Rev James Cleveland, "Peace Be Still"
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1631948.html

It seems like we’ve crossed some sort of event horizon or cultural Rubicon when I scroll past protest photos and videos on Twitter and I have to look closely to see if they’re from Hong Kong or Minneapolis.

The parallels are striking, from the excessive and indiscriminate use of tear gas and gratuitously pepper-spraying and arresting reporters to pundits and leaders calling protesters thugs who should be shot and blaming teachers and church leaders for encouraging them.

And not just in Minneapolis, of course. Protests are popping up in other major cities. Even the White House was in lockdown temporarily.

And, you know:

1. To get the obvious out of the way, yes, all four officers should be arrested (Derek Chauvin has finally been charged with murder – the others should at least be charged with accessory), though it seems the police seem to be going with the defense that George Floyd would still be alive if he’d lived a healthier lifestyle, and I don’t see that helping to ease tensions.

2. And yes, institutional racism in America is most definitely a thing, and has been since we were still colonies of the Crown. Trump’s so-called presidency has made things worse, but the problem existed long before he invented Birtherism.

Indeed, the protests are not just about George Floyd. They’re about Kenneth Walker, Breona Taylor, Sean Reed, Ahmaud Arbery, Steve Taylor (and that’s just in the last month) and so on and etc all the way back to Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and the thousands upon thousands before them – to say nothing of the whole stupid Amy Cooper saga.

3. So IMO the anger and fury of protesters is 100% justified. The violence, not so much, but it’s understandable. MLK Jr told us this way back in the 60s: riots are the language of the unheard, and the inevitable result of systemic injustice – they don’t just magically pop up out of nowhere.

That said, it’s worth adding that protest violence is often the result of police handling the protests badly by escalating tensions rather than defusing them, whether intentionally or by accident. In cases where the police themselves are the object of protest anger, simply showing up in riot gear is almost guaranteed to make a bad situation worse. I’ve seen anecdotal accounts that this is the case in Minneapolis. It’s certainly the case in Hong Kong. Like the saying goes, when you send in riot police, you get a riot.

4. Like in HK, the law-and-order response from Trump and those who worship him has been predictably awful and likely to get people killed. One thing going for the US is that the police is not just one force that takes orders from the White House – it’s a diverse array of local and state forces, and at least some of them are trying to defuse tensions rather than escalate them.

5. It’s hard to know how bad this is going to get. Past history isn't much help – usually, things die down after a few days and we spend the aftermath discussing the problem and generally doing little to address it. Here in 2020, we have a white supremacist in the White House with a cult army of supporters fuelled by paranoid conspiracy theories that liberals, the media and PoC are all out to get them.

I guess we’re lucky the Open Carry buffoons who stormed capital buildings because they couldn't get haircuts on demand haven't shown up at these protests to “help” – not yet, anyway. That could change.

And I don’t even want to think about what all this could mean for the 2020 election.

6. Anyway, as I said, we’ve been living our own version of this in HK for some time now in terms of protests and police brutality. And it's almost like we’ve become a template for Minneapolis – not just the police going crazy with tear gas and targeting reporters (at least the non-white ones), but protesters reportedly throwing tear gas canisters back at police.

So there’s a certain hypocritical irony that Trump advocates shooting black protesters for rioting while he simultaneously takes steps to punish Beijing and the HK govt for oppressing protests here.

That said, I’m not sure he even knows what’s going on here. His statement on HK doesn’t say a word about police brutality or human rights. He’s concerned mainly with HK’s loss of autonomy under 1C2S, and I think he only cares inasmuch as it’s something else he can add to his anti-China rhetoric, which he deploys mostly to entertain his cult and push the nonsense narrative that China – not Trump – is to blame for COVID-19 killing over 100,000 Americans.

Which I only mention because a number of HK people seem to think Trump can somehow save us if he takes action. Thing is, Trump doesn’t care about us, or about human rights in general. He pals around with oppressive authoritarians and ruthless dictators, and even talks about Xi Jinping as a good friend. Sure, it's all in his head. The point is that if his actions do us any good whatsoever, it will be by sheer dumb luck.

And okay, when things look increasingly hopeless as they do here, you can't afford to be picky. If Kim Jong-un or Rodrigo Duterte intervened to save us, we’d probably take it.

Still, the thing about Trump is that his whims turn on a dime, and he regularly undermines his own policies on Twitter. Also, his “plan” is pretty vague and hasn’t actually been enacted yet. Everything depends on details and execution, and it’s always possible that his “solution” to HK will be worse than the problem.

7. Oh, BTW, shoutout to Laura Ingraham for coming up with the worst attempt so far to convince black people that Trump totally understands what they're going through.

Developing …

Revolution earth,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Voice of the Beehive, "Let It Bee"
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1629337.html

The reception to Beijing’s plan to slap a National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong in the name of “urgency” – and the HK police’s reaction to that reception – has been about what you’d expect.

Of course, not everyone is freaking out about the NSL. Quite a lot of people welcome it, and have been going around making very conspicuously public statements saying so. Every govt department head has been releasing statements supporting the law – each and every one of them verbatim copies of each other apart from the dept name and corresponding serial number. So you know they’re sincere.

Meanwhile, Beijing officials, HK govt officials and pro-Beijing editors and pundits have spent the last few days making public statements or publishing op-eds assuring everyone (especially the international community) that their fears are unfounded. There is nothing to worry about. All is well.

And so on.

Pretty much all of them boil down to the same basic points:

1. Everyone has national security laws, why can’t we?

2. The NSL will only apply to a tiny, miniscule minority of people. If you are not one of them, you have nothing to fear.

3. The NSL will bring peace and harmony to HK, and all this political turmoil will be a thing of the past, and we can get on with our lives and the economy can recover and everything will be awesome.

I’m not kidding about the last one. Here’s our first CE Tung Chee-hwa saying it. And here’s SCMP columnist Alex Lo calling the NSL a “masterstroke” that means “Hong Kong can now be depoliticised and get back to reviving its economy and improving people’s lives”.

Zounds! Imagine that. Years of polarized politics, frustration at the broken promises of universal suffrage, mistrust of the police, and fears of being “disappeared”, magically wiped away just like that by this one law.

“Well, why didn’t they say so earlier?” etc.

As you might imagine, I find their reassurances rather unreassuring. And one reason (of many) is that not a single one of these people has said exactly HOW the NSL will bring peace and harmony.

Seriously: how? I want one of these people to please spell out for me in detail how NSL will accomplish this in a way that isn't scary or alarming.

None have. I think I can guess why.

I’ve noticed that statements and op-eds opposing the NSL have gone into great detail as to why it’s a bad idea and means the end of One Country Two Systems, giving historical and contemporary context, with numerous examples of how “national security” could be (and already has been) abused in China and elsewhere to stifle and punish opposition.

See for example this column from Cliff Buddle, which ran in SCMP the same day Alex Lo’s column did. He makes a detailed and thoughtful analysis (that saves me a great deal of typing) explaining why there’s good reason to worry about the NSL, and to doubt Beijing’s claims that it will be very narrowly applied.

By contrast, Alex Lo’s column doesn’t back up his assertion at all. He doesn’t explain how the NSL will depoliticize HK, end the protest violence and go back to normal. It simply will. As if the entire problem all along was that we didn't have Draconian enough laws to deal with these punks throwing petrol bombs in the streets. Now that we’re going to have one, problem solved and we can all get along.

There are various reasons for the gaping plot hole in such declarations. For one thing, the people making them are under no obligation to defend their conclusions. It’s not like the law won’t passed if not enough people are convinced that it’s necessary, so why make an effort to back your argument?

For another, the point of these statements is really to be seen publicly declaring sworn loyalty to the new regime. These people know where the power lies, and like good Quislings they’re making sure the Powers That Be point the NSL crosshairs at someone else.

Also, at least for now, no one wants to say the quiet part out loud – the NSL will bring about peace and harmony by using the strong arm of radical law enforcement to terrify the opposition into silence and make examples of anyone who resists.

Voilà: peace and harmony.

This is what China does with its malcontents – this is what the HK govt and its supporters want for HK.

They'll say they don't, of course. And you know, I’m sure many of them imagine in their heads that we’ll still have the same freedoms (or at least they will, because they don't harbour verboten political beliefs, so same thing, really). And maybe some of them actually believe the NSL will be only used against the most violent radicals, and that once those people are dealt with, everyone will be right as rain.

In reality, it's a classic case of trading liberty for security without the slightest understanding just what the price of that security will be. Or maybe they do – and they’re okay with that as long as it’s someone else paying that price.

I wonder how they’ll feel if the price becomes higher than they expected, and where they might draw the line – midnight house raids? Disappearing journalists? Xinjiang-style re-education camps? Tiananmen 2.0?

Welp. We’ll find out.

The price of everything and the value of nothing,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Sid Ramin, "The Syncopated Click"
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1627855.html

Thursday night, Beijing’s National People's Congress Standing Committee announced it will put forward proposals to enact national security legislation in Hong Kong that will officially make sedition, treason, foreign interference and terrorism crimes in the SAR – bypassing the HK government’s Legislative Council in the process.

By no coincidence, this comes after the HK govt, the HK police, pro-government politicians and Beijing liaison officials police have spent past few months consistently building up the narrative that the protest movement as secessionists and terrorists backed by foreign interference – which just happen to be the exact specific things this bill is targeting.

You see where this is going, yes?

Backgrounder: Under the Basic Law (the mini-constitution that governs Hong Kong under the One Country Two Systems arrangement that allows HK to operate separately from China for 50 years), Article 23 requires the HK govt to enact legislation covering “national security” issues such as sedition, treason and terrorism before its SAR status expires in 2047. This is, to say the least, thorny, because at the time the Basic Law was drafted, everyone knew what the Chinese govt counts as sedition and treason (i.e. simply saying something critical of the govt was equivalent to actively attempting to overthrow it), and that Beijing would naturally expect HK’s law to have similar criteria.

The HK govt first introduced an Article 23 bill in 2003. The response from the HK public was 500,000 people marching on the street to oppose it. The HK govt backed off and didn't bring the matter up again.

Now, in 2020, national security legislation is back, mainly because Beijing (and Carrie Lam, and her crew) have said that it’s the only way to put an end to the protests.

That’s not even remotely true, but it’s the only solution Beijing is interested in because that’s how they handle it on the mainland, and frankly they’re sick of our crap and want to out the fear of God into us. And with HK’s pro-Beijing majority in the Legislative Council not having a big enough majority to railroad legislation through locally, Beijing has evidently decided to bypass LegCo and enact national-security laws here by adding them to Annex III of the Basic Law. HK still has to pass its own national security law under Article 23, but in the meantime, the laws under Annex III will do nicely.

The vote is expected next week.

And so, what then?

I don't know. A lot depends on the details, but there’s no real reason to be optimistic when you loOk at the broader context in which all this is happening. Carrie Lam and her henchmen were just on TV telling us (and the world) that there’s nothing to worry about: we’re still a totally free and open society, and One Country Two Systems will remain completely intact after this bill is passed.

She said that about the extradition bill too.

I mean, these are the same people who just managed to get a long-running political satire program on RTHK taken off the air for the terrible crime of making fun of the police (by a comedian who used to be a police officer!), which to them is no different from actively encouraging people to hate the police. So no, I don't trust them to wield this new power responsibly or fairly.

Is it truly the end of One Country Two Systems?

It’s too soon to say definitively – I think it will continue to exist in the technical sense that HK will still be considered a semi-autonomous region that gets to plan its own economy and have its own version of democracy, etc. But it will be run the way Beijing tells them to run it – and Beijing will be a lot more proactive in doing just that. In terms of free speech, human rights and civil liberties, the HK system may be a separate system, but it will be a system nearly identical to the mainland system, rendering the term another meaningless catch-phrase for Beijing’s foreign ministry spokespeople and the CE to throw around when they respond to international criticism, like “hegemony” and “rule of law”.

How will protesters react?

There’s a march planned for Sunday that the police will almost certainly ban, and will beat up and arrest anyone who tries (as well as anyone who happens to be near anyone who tries, the media and innocent bystanders included). Beyond that, I don’t know. My sense is that the protest movement overall won’t give up – the fact that Beijing is resorting to this shows that the protests has truly rattled the CCP. So stopping now would be a waste of all the effort put in so far.

But they aren’t crazy about another year of sucking tear gas in nightly street fights with riot police either, not least because they know it’s a futile gesture anyway. I’ve heard they’re looking for alternative resistance action plans.

On the other hand, if they feel they truly have nothing to lose, maybe they’ll go out swinging. In which the police would be delighted to accommodate them.

Either way, it seems 2047 has indeed come early.

For more information:

Read this Vox explainer.

Read also this mildly hopeful commentary from Stephen Vines.

The other shoe,

This is dF

Current Mood: pessimistic
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Jeannie C Riley, "Widow Jones"
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1626764.html

You know Hong Kong has got COVID-19 under control when the protest movement kicks back into gear.

Granted, it’s mostly just been people singing the unofficial anthem in malls. But that hasn’t stopped the police from treating them like terrorists about to blow up the place.

Anyway, there are several key differences between last year and this year.

Mary Hui at Quartz lists most of them here, but essentially:

1. Beijing has more aggressively stated its right (and its intention) to dictate affairs in HK, even though the Basic Law (our mini-constitution defining One Country Two Systems) says otherwise.

2. The police has been using social distancing restrictions to harass businesses that support the protest movement, and to arrest protesters.

3. They’ve also been busy arresting top pro-Democracy activists and legislators.

4. In fact, the police are generally much more aggressive now in squashing any potential protest. No applications have been approved, and if so much as five people gather somewhere to protest, the police send in vans full of riot police to dish out gratuitous violence, pepper spray and body searches, And that’s just for the media.

We’ll likely be seeing much more of #4 – the Independent Police Complaints Council has issued its investigative report on police brutality and general handling of protests, and generally found that the police could maybe have done a better job in a few specific situations, but otherwise, keep up the good work.

This wasn't unexpected – the IPCC isn’t as independent as the name makes it out to be, and has no legal powers to investigate most of the complaints beyond comparing the police version of events with the complainant’s accusations. And as the IPCC is mostly run by former cops, you can already guess which side they’re going to give more credence to (hence one of the Five Demands™ being a truly independent inquiry into police brutality and corruption).

Carrie Lam's official response was also as expected – as far as she's concerned, the report shows the police have been exonerated, and Hong Kong's biggest problem is lying protesters besmirching the police with propaganda and fake news. Naturally, the solution is to stop protesters from spreading fake news. I think we know what that will involve.

The fact that she gave this response whilst standing in front of a huge backdrop saying “The Truth About Hong Kong” kind of says it all, really.

The injustice of it all is heartbreaking. For months we watched the police fire off endless rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets, real bullets, bean bag rounds, pepper rounds and pepper spray not only at the hardline protesters smashing up stuff, but anyone who got in their way, including journalists, first aid responders, social workers, innocent bystanders and legislators trying to broker peace. Less-lethal weapons are supposed to be used to deter imminent threats – HK police are as likely to use them as an exclamation point to assert their authority over you if you so much as look at them funny. They’ve done nothing to keep the peace and everything to ensure violent confrontation.

They’re doing it still. The video evidence of police brutality, irresponsibility and unprofessionalism is staggering. The govt has chosen to pretend it is “fake news” and propaganda spread by the protesters. Now, thanks to the IPCC report, the police have essentially been given a green light to do whatever they want to protesters and anyone who supports them. At most they risk a reprimand (which may be issued with a wink, for all we know).

What happens now?

We don't know. Given that the police have been actively running propaganda campaigns attempting to label the protest movement as a terrorist organization, now would be a good time for the protest movement to shift gears, disavow violence as much as possible and use other tools to resist. I was never a fan of the violent wing of the protest movement, even if they were mostly limiting the targets to property and riot police – partly because I generally oppose violence, but mainly because it plays into the hands of the govt and the police. They WANT the protesters to be violent so they can justify their disproportionately violent response. It plays into their “terrorist” narrative, and the best way to counter that right now is to take no action that could be used to feed that narrative.

Unfortunately, it seems the govt has a plan to make sure the protest movement stays angry.

Remember how all of this started with the extradition bill that meant HK citizens who just happened to be critical of China could be whisked off to stand trial in China’s notorious judicial system? That bill is now dead, but the govt seems keen to pass new laws that seem almost designed to provoke the same kind of angry reactions as the extradition bill.

For example, the pro-Beijing DAB party is finalizing a bill that makes it a crime to criticize or mock China’s national anthem.

There’s also been talk about solving the problem of the police assaulting journalists by requiring journalists to be accredited by the govt. How would this solve that problem, you ask? I could explain the official reasons, but they would make no sense. Suffice to say the police excuse for assaulting journalists is that a few of them are allegedly protesters pretending to be journalists to escape capture. Which (1) may not even be true, and (2) even if it was, the police are basically arguing that if a suspected criminal hides in a crowd of 100 people and you don't know which one is him, it's in the interest of law and order to pepper-spray and beat up all 100 people to make sure you get him.

The govt will likely follow that up with the infamous Article 23 legislation intended to enact laws in HK against sedition and treason – with the likelihood that its definition of what counts as both will be identical to Beijing’s (i.e. any criticism of the govt whatsoever).

The fact the govt is pushing for all of this at a time when tensions are already sky-high suggests to me they're hoping the protest movement will be angry and desperate enough to do what they did last year – only this time, the police will be under no obligation or pressure to show restraint. Which I reckon is just fine with Beijing. They don’t really want to send in the PLA to shoot protesters and make examples of them – they’d much rather the HK police do that for them, if only for the sake of optics. And the current police chief seems keen on the idea.

So that’s what we have to look forward to in the coming months. The past few months have been mostly quiet, and it was the opportune time for the HK govt to try and find a peaceful way out of this. Turns out they don't want one.

Cruel summer,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
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So yes, for the last week people have been out on the streets protesting for their right to leave their home any damn time they feel like it. Which was predictable, given that Trump, the GOP and Fox News have been going out of their way to encourage them.

So, to the bloggery:

1. Is it stupid and dangerous? Yes, very. We know this because (1) science and (2) history – we literally had this argument during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, with lots of people deciding it was time to stop wearing masks and get back to work. It went badly for everyone.

That said, we’re lucky that the turnout for these things isn’t as big as certain news outlets might be making it look – at least so far – and it’s encouraging that most people don’t support the protests or lifting the stay-at-home orders too soon. Still, it doesn't take that many people to get a cluster going.

2. Is it staged? To an extent, yes. There’s plenty of evidence it’s the kind of astroturfed protests we used to see with the Tea Party rallies that preceded Trump (complete with Fox News promos). This is essentially Tea Party 2.0, only smaller, and this time it’s serving as a re-election campaign strategy for Trump (namely, ensuring voters blame Demo governors for PPE shortages, economic damage and the rising body count).

3. However, that’s not to say all of the people attending these protests are paid actors or don’t have real grievances. I mean, yes, much of it (possibly most of it) is conspiracy theories, liberty-posturing, terrible white-privilege analogies and unlimited refills. But I have seen interviews with a few protesters who said their real complaint is that they can’t work from home, their workplace/job has been deemed non-essential and they have no income as long as the stay-at-home orders are in place. Unemployment is sky-high and they have no idea if they're getting their jobs back, and they’re worried that they’re going to be in huge trouble financially if the lockdown continues.

I think that’s a legit worry – in fact, it’s probably evidence that one of the downsides of extended quarantine or lockdown is that it’s bad for you both psychologically and physically. This (along with the economic impact) is why a number of experts have said that while it’s going to take as long as 2022 to defeat COVID-19 with a vaccine or herd immunity, we can’t realistically stay on lockdown until then.

4. The problem is that we can't go back to business as usual, either. What we need is the right balance of social distancing and PPE – plus adequate testing capabilities – to allow businesses to open and for people to work safely or generally go outside to minimize the risk of starting new clusters and starting the whole process over again.

This can’t be done state by state – it requires a coordinated national strategy with strong leadership, as opposed to (say) a vindictive whimsical man-child grifter.

Unfortunately, that’s what we have.

5. On a related note, regarding the evangelical churches defying lockdown orders …

Like with the protests, most of it is the usual posturing and scoring political points in the fictional Liberal War On Christianity™, but some of it is reasonable – particularly small churches (with congregations of maybe 20-30 people on a good day) who think they should be exempted because they’re capable of maintaining sufficient social distancing and other precautions.

I do think that’s a fair point – on the other hand, I don’t know how enforceable it is, and of course everyone will want to be an exception to the rule, so a blanket lockdown is probably the most realistic policy, at least for now (for the reasons mentioned above).

Also, as a Christian, I get that fellowship and worship are meaningful. But I also think as Christians we should take all precautions to not spread a deadly virus around. This just seems obvious to me. But then here in HK, my church has been holding Zoom/YouTube services for over 10 weeks. So it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make. We’re pretty sure Jesus is okay with it.

I should mention this is true for many churches in the US. It’s mainly the charismatic / evangelical megachurches who gleefully hooked their ministries to the Trump Crazy Train that have been refusing to cooperate and playing the “O look at the Atheist Deep State persecuting my Christian faith” card.

6. As for the politicians and pundits going on TV saying the economy is more important than living and if reopening businesses means 2% of the population has to die, that’s fine, two quick thoughts on that: (1) it would actually make the economy worse, and (2) I guarantee you the people who spout this line on TV are okay with it because they assume the death toll won’t include themselves, their loved ones or anyone of consequence, so who cares?

7. Anyway, it’s hard to be optimistic about this. Far too many people think COVID-19 is fake news, or they think it's real but overblown, and meanwhile the federal govt is hoarding PPE in an apparent bid to hold states for ransom, while Glorious Leader is using press briefings mainly as an excuse to gather the media in the room so he can work on his insult comedy stand-up routine.

I mean, I’m honestly not sure which is worse – that he actually believes that injecting yourself with Lysol while lying in a tanning booth will clear COVID-19 out of your system, or that he just says such things to pwn the libs and entertain his fans at a time when almost 60,000+ Americans are dead from this thing (which is a subset of 218,000 deaths globally) and counting.

Anyway, some states are already reopening, so I guess we’re going to find out the hard way if it’s a bad idea or not. If we’re lucky, enough people will keep washing their hands, wearing masks and social-distancing as much as possible when they go out. That will help. Let’s just hope it’s enough.

Catch the wave,

This is dF

POSTSCRIPT: If yr wondering, here in Hong Kong we’re doing surprisingly well. But we’re also an example of what happens when you get lax too early. We recorded our first case on Jan 24. Between then and mid-March we only had around 160 cases and four deaths. Then a new cluster emerged in Lan Kwai Fung (a popular club district) and in less than a month we shot up to 1,000 cases.

That’s now tapered off – we’re at 1,038 cases currently, and we’re at a point where we can actually go several days a week without a new case being reported. And we’re still only at four deaths total.

Still, be warned – lower your guard too early and you’re going to get hammered.

PRODUCTION NOTE: I have a lot of links for this post, but Dreamwidth isn't doing rich text, and I'm really not keen to write out all the html manually, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I'll repost this link-embedded version when Dreamwidth or my browser get their act together.

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A clarification on my previous post regarding COVID-19 in HK, the difficulties of maintaining social distancing for long periods of time, and the role of govts in sustained social distancing:

In HK, we mitigate that with masks and hand sanitizer, etc. But it only goes so far. You need solid and consistent govt leadership setting the example and imposing limitations.

I should have added:

Not that we have that in Hong Kong.

The new social distancing regs that kicked in today are good in theory (if somewhat flawed). But a potentially bigger problem is enforcement – partly because the details are difficult to enforce consistently and fairly, and partly because consistent and fair enforcement is the responsibility of the HK police force, which is not especially renowned for being consistent or fair.

In fact, the HK police is probably the most hated organization in Hong Kong right now, and most if not all police officers hate us back. That’s not a good mix when a squad of cops walk into a restaurant and start measuring how far apart diners are and making them move if they’re less than six feet apart.

It also doesn't help that the HK police are currently obsessed with the fact that protests still happen in HK (and still receive a lot of public support), which means not every protester is in jail, and they remain convinced the way to fix this is to continue to arrest, jail, beat, pepper spray, tear gas and harass as many protesters as it takes until the protests stop.

<tangent>

They’ve also been going out of their way in recent months to establish a clear narrative that the protest movement is in reality a terrorist movement. Stephen Vines has a concise write-up on this, but essentially police have uncovered several stashes of bombs, weapons and ammo that they say is intended to wage a campaign of bombing and cop-killing across HK. They frequently describe this as if the campaign is already happening, even though the handful of incidents they can actually point to – though certainly illegal – have caused minor damage and injured no one.

The police have, of course, produced no evidence whatsoever that these stashes have anything to do with the protest movement or that the people arrested intended to use them to target the police. But apparently, according to Vines, that hasn't stopped Carrie Lam and other govt officials from reportedly telling foreign diplomats in HK that the protest movement is either a terrorist threat in itself or providing cover for a fringe terrorist group (funded by foreign elements! Probably!).

One aspect the Vines column doesn’t touch upon is the fact that this is happening while a number of adamantly pro-govt/pro-police legislators are calling for Article 23 legislation.

Quick history lesson: Article 23 of the Basic Law – our mini-constitution established with the 1997 handover from the UK to China – says HK must establish a ‘national security’ law by 2047 that specifically covers terrorism, sedition and treason. The HK govt tried this in 2003 and was countered with what at the time one of the biggest street protests in HK’s history, for the simple reason that we knew perfectly well that the ultimate purpose of the law sooner or later was to allow the HK govt to define terrorism, sedition and treason the same way China does: literally anything that criticizes or challenges any govt action, policy or official in any way. Simply disagreeing with the CCP could bring you up on charges of attempting to overthrow the govt.

Imagine what the HK govt would do with such a law right now.

The pro-govt people are practically drooling at the prospect. So are the police. Luckily, we’re in no immediate danger just yet – the whole protest movement started with an extradition bill that would have enabled HK anti-govt activists to be extradited to China for whatever China felt like charging them with (“soliciting prostitutes” is a classic go-to charge). It would be beyond stupid even by Carrie Lam standards to pursue an Article 23 bill now.

On the other hand, the police have just arrested a pro-Democracy district councillor for sedition using an old Colonial law that hasn’t been used for decades. The “sedition” was allegedly forwarding a Facebook post that allegedly gave details of a police officer who some people think was responsible for half-blinding Indonesian journalist Veby Indah covering the protests last September.

A doxxing charge would be understandable (flimsy and arbitrary, but understandable). Sedition? Come on.

The arrest itself is fairly obviously petty revenge by the police (who decided to arrest her at her home at 1:45am). It’s also widely believed to be a test to see if they can actually make a sedition charge stick, and if the public will go along with it, which would pave the way for more sedition arrests and maybe bolster support for Article 23. The police narrative about protesters = terrorists might also possibly being crafted for that purpose.

</tangent>

So anyway, THIS is the police force that will be tasked with enforcing the new social distancing rules – and arresting anyone found violating them.

To be clear, I don’t think they’re going to equate sitting five people at a restaurant table with sedition. But there’s a running bet on Twitter that the police will use the social distancing law as another thing they can arrest protesters for (wearing a surgical mask is technically still illegal, although right now enforcement is, to say the least, impractical). Or – absent any actual protests – they’ll use it as a pretense to shake down and arrest anyone they think might be connected with the protests – especially in restaurants and other businesses that have been openly supportive of the protests. And the police are widely expected to handle those situations the same way they handle anything protest-related – with lots of tear gas, pepper spray and gratuitous violence.

Or maybe they'll use common sense for once and realize that we're all in this together and if there's one thing we should be unifying over, it's this.

Ha ha. No.

So, yeah, the social distancing law might have been necessary, but enforcement is likely to be messy in more ways than one.

All this because some people decided going to LKF to drink a lot of overpriced beer was more important than flattening the curve.

Hope it was worth it.

Don’t go out there,

This is dF

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Hong Kong is now at 518 COVID-19 cases. And of course that’s nothing compared to the US, Italy, Iran, mainland China, and other countries, but since HK gets pointed to as an example of how to flatten the curve, I thought I’d post something about the reason why we’re now at 518 cases because it's instructive of how social distancing is indeed ‘a marathon, not a sprint’, and what happens when you let your guard down.

The short version: despite the HK govt initially failing to take any serious measures to close the borders and ensure enough PPE for everyone, we had managed to keep the number of COVID-19 cases down by most people imposing their own mitigation techniques that we learned from SARS: work from/stay at home as much as possible, wear a mask when going out, wash your hands constantly, etc.

It hasn’t been uniform or perfect by any means, but it still managed to flatten the curve so that we kept the number of cases down to a manageable level – for the first two months after the first case was discovered in HK, we had something like 140 COVID-19 cases and just four deaths.

That changed a little over a week ago when we started importing cases from countries where the infection rates are much higher. Unfortunately this happened at a time when people had cautiously started venturing out again, eating out, going to the gym and going to bars to socialize – not in mass numbers, but more than in the last month or so. And some of the imports (or their friends/family) went out to places like Lan Kwai Fung where all the popular bars are.

Lan Kwai Fung is now the cluster center for this latest outbreak, and the number of cases is now double from last week and over 3x from two weeks ago.

Which is why the HK govt imposed new rules yesterday in which entertainment venues must be closed for 14 days, while public gatherings of more than four people are not allowed (with a few practical exceptions). Any restaurants that want to stay open must ensure their customers can comply with these rules via seating arrangements, limiting the number of people who can come in at once, etc.

The takeaway is this: HK had been practising social distancing and hygiene measures imperfectly but consistently for around 60 days. And it worked – then we got a bit lax, some new cases arrived from overseas, and look what happened.

At the same time, this also illustrates that social distancing is hard to maintain for a long period of time on your own initiative. It’s not just economics (although yes, HK’s economy has also taken a major hit from COVID-19, and that’s on top of the economic impact from last year’s protests) – people can only stay cooped up for so long, especially in a place like HK where most of live in high-rises in small apartments, some as big as a broom closet.

In HK, we mitigate that with masks and hand sanitizer, etc. But it only goes so far. You need solid and consistent govt leadership setting the example and imposing limitations.

(Edited to add [March 28, 22:43]: Not that we have that in HK. I'll be doing a separate post on that. I'm speaking generally here.)

Yes, social distancing is hard on the economy – that’s why we need to think of ways to mitigate the economic impact as well, especially for people whose jobs are not the kind you can do at home (HK has a few measures in place, but could arguably be doing far more than it has).

But ending it too soon would make the economy worse because it would result in even more infections and more deaths, so Dan Patrick would have sacrificed your grandparents for nothing.

So all up, HK has proven two things: (1) social distancing works, and (2) ending it early is a bad idea.

Learn from us.

PS: There’s also been some debate about whether wearing masks would help. A few words on that:

Yes, ideally you should be wearing them. Professor Zeynep Tufekci explains why, and why the mixed messages from WHO, the govt and the media have mostly confused people and made things worse.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To be clear, masks are just one tool in your COVID-19 protection toolbox. Masks alone won’t protect you. Masks + washing your hands, staying home and other measures will make a difference vs doing those things with no mask.

Wash yr damn hands,

This is dF

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Meanwhile, apart from the District Council election, the other wild-card development in the HK protest saga is Trump signing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA), which means HK could lose its special trading status with the US if Congress decides HK and/or China is coming down too hard on protesters, free speech and liberty in general.

Protesters are thrilled. Beijing is the opposite of that.

Is it a game changer? I’m skeptical. Here’s why:

1. For a start, it’s technically redundant. As this lengthy but worthwhile post from Julian Ku at Lawfare explains, most of the provisions in the HKHRDA already exist in some form or other, such as visa protections for Hong Kong residents, targeted sanctions and the ability of Congress to revoke HK’s “special status” in terms of trade and investment.

The key difference is that the HKHRDA expands the criteria for “special status” re-evaluation and requires Congress to review it once a year. According to Ku, it’s worthwhile for that and the symbolism inherent in telling China that while Congress rarely agrees on anything, it’s so united on this issue that even Trump couldn’t afford to blow it off. Which brings us to:

2. To be honest, I’m surprised Trump signed it, because he clearly didn't want to. I’m pretty sure he would have preferred to use the threat of signing it as a negotiating tool in his trade war with China. I suspect the only reason he did sign is because Congress has the votes to override a veto and Trump didn’t want to give Nervous Nancy, Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted the satisfaction of beating him at something.

I’m 100% positive he didn’t do it because he cares about the people of HK. The clue is in his signing statement – notice who he mentions first, and “out of respect”. That should give you an idea of where his priorities lie.

3. The same goes for the GOP Congresspeople who were fronting the bill – especially McConnell, Rubio, Cruz et al. They’re mainly in it for the anti-China grandstanding. China has been and remains a favorite and easy target for Republicans who still fancy themselves as anti-Commie heroes and like to be seen bashing totalitarian dictatorships. (See also: the GOP’s war on Huawei.)

4. Consequently, any subsequent enforcement of the bill is inherently going to be a political decision.

This matters because Hongkongers see the bill first and foremost as an issue of justice and human rights specific to HK’s situation. For Congress (and again, for Republicans especially), it’s partly that, but it’s mainly a tool for achieving American foreign policy objectives regarding China and elsewhere.

Put simply, as this analysis from Lausan Collective argues, the law exists mainly to further America’s economic and geopolitical interests, which historically have typically been prioritized above human rights. That means enforcement is likely to be selective, circumstantial and ultimately self-serving. The HKHRDA might be good for HK at face value – but it comes at a cost that, on a macro level, could make things worse.

5. Which is why I cringe when local people declare Trump, Rubio, Cruz and McConnell heroes and saviors for standing with HK People™.

Granted, this is because I happen to believe Trump is a racist, sexist, corrupt, mentally unhinged dictator-wannabe, and the GOP is a mass of spineless sycophants enabling and encouraging him.

All that aside, I don’t believe Rubio, Cruz and McConnell really care about HK people except as some abstract representation of the general fight for freedom from Beijing oppression that they can use in a speech. Trump cares more about winning his trade war with China, and generally sees HK as an inconvenient but possibly useful negotiating tool.

In fact, I’m not convinced he even understands what’s going on in HK. This is after all the same guy who reckoned Xi could sort the whole thing out in one “personal meeting” with the protesters (who infamously have no leaders to speak of), and also recently said the only reason Xi hasn’t sent in the tanks yet is because he, Donald J Trump, personally told him not to, yr welcome.

6. So all up, I think the protesters celebrating the HKHRDA should be prepared for disappointment – at least if they’re depending solely on the US to be their champion to the point of producing results.

7. That said, some HK protest groups seem to understand this – which is why they’re now hoping to get other countries like Canada, Germany, Australia and the UK to pass similar measures on the reasonable grounds that neither Carrie Lam nor Beijing is likely to give in to pressure from the US alone, but if enough countries join in, they will be forced to rethink their approach.

(If nothing else, getting the UK to pass its own HKHRDA will put pressure on Lam and other govt leaders who have British passports that they might be banking on as escape hatches in case China finally brings the hammer down on HK.)

This makes sense as far as it goes, because I really don’t believe the HKHRDA on its own will move the needle much in terms of how Lam handles the protests from this point on. Piling on the pressure from other countries might – and if nothing else, other such laws might actually have some teeth to them.

In any case, it’s going to take time for Lam and/or Beijing to feel the heat. Until then, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Just another bill,

This is dF

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Previously on Senseless Acts of Bloggery:

[The protests are] expected to go on all summer long. […]

Update: they did. And they haven’t stopped. And they’ve gotten progressively worse.

Wikipedia can help you fill in the gaps, but suffice to say it’s gotten worse. Two unarmed protesters have been shot (neither fatally, but in both cases that was sheer luck), and a week ago protesters ended up trapped in Polytechnic University in a siege that came this close to becoming the Tiananmen 2.0 we’ve all been expecting.

Thankfully it didn’t.

It’s been quiet since then, mainly because this past Sunday was the District Council elections, and the protesters – wisely – stopped all activities for two strategic reasons: (1) the likelihood that the govt would use them as an excuse to cancel the elections, and (2) the likelihood that if the elections went ahead, the pro-Beijing (blue) candidates would get creamed by the pro-Democratic (yellow) candidates – hence the govt’s alleged interest in looking for any excuse to cancel the elections.

Indeed, the District Council elections were being touted by both sides as a de facto referendum on the 5 Demands and the current turmoil. And while I hate labelling general elections as de facto referendums on a specific issue, there’s little doubt that a lot of people were going to vote based on their feelings about the protests, even though the District Council doesn’t have much power to do anything about them – the DC really just exists to manage local issues and report them to LegCo. But if nothing else the elections were expected to serve as the strongest indicator of public sentiment about the situation.

And so they were.

1. Short version: The DC has 479 seats across 18 districts, of which 452 were up for grabs. When voting started, the pro-Beijing camp controlled all 18 districts and the vast majority of seats.

They now control one.

The pro-Democratic camp own the rest, and with 389 seats, they now have a much larger majority than the pro-Beijing camp had before the voting started.

2. Total voter turnout: almost 73%.

3. So, you know, that’s a pretty decisive message to CE Carrie Lam and her admin: we’re sick of tear gas and police brutality, neither of which is working and is actually making things worse, so you need to change gears and work out a political solution.

Predictably, her interpretation of that message is: “We’re sick of protesters, please stop them.” Hence her press conference in which she said (paraphrased), “Beijing doesn’t blame me for the results, and I’m not giving in to any more demands from protesters.” (The first part, I suspect, explains the second.)

4. And so nothing has changed. Which is no surprise. For one thing, a recent report claims she’s increasingly isolated herself in a Trump-like bubble of yes-men protecting her from reports of police brutality. Also, Lam didn’t listen when 2 million people marched against the extradition bill that started this sorry mess – why should she honor the results of an election just because her side lost?

5. Meanwhile, it's been fun watching Chinese state media contort themselves trying to explain the results after a couple of weeks urging HK’s “silent majority” to show support for the govt and the police. Most have resorted to the usual conspiracy theories: the CIA agents rigged the results, protesters threatened to beat up people if they voted blue, etc. Some simply declined to report the results: “There was a District Council election in HK today. Turnout was high. Now, sports.”

6. One other fun detail: On Monday, when we all woke up to find out the results, there was at least one incident of spontaneous champagne parties on the streets of Central celebrating the election results.

Which I mention just to point out that in the 23+ years I've lived here, I can't think of a single election in HKSAR history where people celebrated the result with champagne in the streets. Privately or at political party HQs, yes. On the streets, no.

I'm just saying.

7. What happens from here is anyone’s guess, as usual. Protesters have already released the protest activity schedule for the next month, and we can only presume that there will inevitably be violence as long as the police keep handling things as they have been. Lam has made her feelings clear that the beatings will continue until morale improves, regardless of whether it actually works.

This weekend will be an indicator of things to come. All I’m sure of for now is that the protesters are not going to leave it at this. Lam’s decision to ignore the concerns of 2 million people in June got us into this mess. Her decision to ignore the election results isn’t going to get us out of it.

Born to lose,

This is dF

BONUS TRACK: For those of you asking, "Wait, HK has elections? I thought the protesters were demanding democracy?"

We have elections, but not for everything. The District Council election is the only election where everyone can vote. For the Legislative Council, we can only directly elect 35 of 70 seats. For the chief executive, we have no say at all. This is what the protesters have been demanding when they call for universal suffrage – one person, one vote, for all elected offices.

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[Sorry this is tl;dr, but there's a lot to process here. – Mgmt]

A lot has happened since last month’s post about 1 million people taking to the streets to protest a proposed bill that would enable extradition between, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and mainland China.

Wikipedia is keeping track of it all here if you need a quick catch-up, but suffice to say that since the last post, there have been lots more protests (peak attendance: 2 million) – some sensible, some otherwise – that have settled into a fairly predictable pattern of peaceful protests in the daytime, after which the hardcore guys get on with the violence. To be clear, for the most part, the anti-govt protesters mostly favour violence against property and cops (and only if the latter get in their way), while the pro-govt protesters favour violence against anti-govt protesters – to include apparently hiring triad gangs to beat the hell out of them with bamboo sticks.

This is expected to go on all summer long. It’s ugly and depressing and I don’t really know where all this is going.

There’s way too much here for me to comment on in one post, so just a couple of thoughts:

1. I’m very much against violence in any form, and I’m critical of the hardcore protesters who at this stage don’t seem to have any real game plan apart from generally smashing shit and beating up any cops that get in their way. To be clear, the vast majority of protesters are peaceful, but a few hundred of these guys are in this for the violence, if only because they’re so angry with the govt that they gotta beat up someone, and the police are a conveniently available face of the govt for them to smash against.

2. At the same time, I do think the police bear a lot of responsibility here. It’s no coincidence that the protests generally go peacefully until the riot police show up, which has a tendency to make things worse. Law and order and clearing the streets are all fine and well, but it’s also clear that the tear gas, rubber bullets and generally clubbing people on the head aren’t really working as a deterrent – not least because police brutality is one of the grievances the protesters are angry about.

3. That said, ultimately I think the HKG – especially chief executive Carrie Lam – bears most of the responsibility for all this.

Lam has handled this so badly it’s hard to know where to begin. The short version is that she treated the extradition bill as a simple plugging of a legal loophole, then seemed genuinely baffled why anyone would find this objectionable or worrying, as if we don’t know the kind of judicial system China has or how it works. Her initial response to critics was to ignore them, then as the protests grew bigger she tried to reassure everyone with “trust me, we’ll only actual criminals will be extradited and HK will have any final say against Beijing in cases where we think it’s a political case” – which is hard to believe when Beijing frequently reminds us at times like these that actually they do have ultimately authority over the HKG’s decisions on legal issues and if you don’t like it, then tough.

4. Lam’s greatest failure in all this is failing to understand why people were upset over the extradition bill, as well as the broader context in which all this is happening. Put simply, the people protesting in the streets aren’t just upset about the extradition law – they’re upset because they see no future in HK. Everything costs too much (especially housing), jobs don’t pay enough, the wealth gap is increasing, and their future involves HK eventually becoming part of a ruthless totalitarian regime. We can’t even hold the chief executive accountable with elections because the office is effectively appointed by Beijing. The protesters are worried about the future, and the HKG is giving them no reason to hope for anything better. At least half a dozen young people have committed suicide over this issue. And no one is listening.

5. And they’re not likely to start listening now. Yesterday Beijing’s local office held a rare press conference that aimed to not only fully support Lam and the HK police and reaffirm their authority, but also framing the current problem is entirely the fault of lawless protesters disrespecting that authority, which is in their view the only problem that needs solving. It was carefully worded, but the message was clear – unauthorized protests and violence are illegal and the govt has the right to jail you for it, the end.

And, you know, technically they're right. The anti-govt protesters have justified their escalation by pointing out the peaceful protests didn't work, but violent protests don’t work either – all they do is give the govt the excuse it needs to ignore yr grievances put you in jail. Yes that sucks, but that’s how real life works. At the same time, ignoring grievances also isn’t working, which is why we’ve arrived at this impasse.

6. Even so, despite public support for Lam, I’m sure that privately Beijing is very annoyed with her, because what started as concerns over an extradition law that no one really wanted (not even Taiwan) has blossomed into constant massive protests, street violence and calls for full-on democracy. Indeed, the extradition bill is practically dead in the water in terms of legislative action, but this isn’t really about that anymore (see Point 4, above).

Beijing has seen this before – in the summer of 1989 – and we all know how that ended.

7. Which raises the question: will HK become the new Tiananmen Square Massacree?

I really don’t know.

Beijing only has so much patience for this sort of thing. State media on the mainland (which is portraying the protests as anti-China treason) is already calling for a hard crackdown, and the head of the PLA has already said, “Call us if you need us, we’re happy to help.”

One thing in our favour is that even Xi Jinping knows that the optics of a full-on crackdown in HK will be worse than a crackdown in its own cities. And that matters more today than it did in 1989, because China is in the middle of building itself up as an engine for international economic supremacy. So it has more to lose now than it did then.

Also, unlike with Tiananmen Square, a HK Massacree is likely to be thoroughly documented on video that will undoubtedly go viral, which makes plausible deniability harder (though perhaps not impossible in these days where we’re encouraged to consume media that tells us what we want to hear).

But I’m not too optimistic. The outcome will probably depend on who blinks first. Neither side looks ready to back down. On the other hand, this has been going on for eight weeks now, and the spectacle of street violence on TV every other night is exhausting and demoralizing. Even people who support the demands of the protesters are starting to wonder how long this is going to go on. The hardcore guys no longer seem to have a game plan apart from protest, disrupt things, smash shit, wait for the cops to show up and fight them, and maybe THIS time the HKG will give us what we want.

This can’t go on indefinitely – and further escalation probably means people might start getting killed. If that happens, all bets are off.

I hope it doesn't come to that. I can’t say for sure that it won’t. What I am sure of is that there’s no version of this where we all go back to business as usual. The city has ripped itself apart over this, and no matter what happens next, most of us will be keeping an eye on 2047 with fear and trepidation.

Keep hope alive,

This is dF

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Ambient cafe soundtrack
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1539501.html

Today we had a private funeral for our dog Funny, who passed away peacefully two weeks ago.

I won’t show you the photos, in case that sort of thing is triggery, but I can share with you the image we put on her urn.

We didn’t invite anyone – we just spent some time with her, sang some hymns, said some prayers, thanked her for her service and said goodbye.

It was a bit of an experience in itself in that I’ve never even been to a pet funeral, let alone arranged one for one of my own pets. In that sense, a few remarks are in order:

The funeral home is waaaaaaaaay up in Yuen Long in the New Territories in an ancient industrial building that looks like it’s been abandoned for years. If the customer service people hadn’t sent us photos showing the entrance we would have thought we’d come to the wrong place.
Inside, it was nice. They set up a room for us that we could use for one hour. It was nicely done, and they had her “sleeping” in a basket – which didn't quite work only because Funny had a unique sleeping style in which she curled up like a cat and buried her face in a corner of her bed so deep that we could never figure out how she could breathe.
The cremation ceremony was a bit jarring, as we were present for the placement and they let us flip the switches operating the machine. We didn’t see anything but there was this sudden bright orange firelight reflecting on the wall opposite the door. And, you know, yikes.

Anyway, now we have an urn that is now on display in a columbaria they have in the showroom. She’ll stay there for two months and then we’ll bring her home.

Overall, it was pretty emotional. As you’d expect. But it was good closure – something I’ve not always had with pets who have passed on.

Anyway, I can’t add to what’s already on her urn except … goodbye, Funny.

dF

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Ambient television
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1536511.html

Some of you may have seen a news story of a million people protesting on the streets of Hong Kong over a proposed extradition bill.

Here's what that looked like (you'll need to go full-screen to get the full effect – trust me, it's worth it).

"Hong Kong Protest and March against Extradition Law / Bill (Timelapse) by Jordan Moulds - 9/6/2019" (Watch on YouTube)

There are good summaries here and here, but the gist of it is:

A Hong Kong resident is currently accused of murdering his girlfriend whilst in Taiwan, then fleeing back to HK to avoid prosecution.
Hong Kong currently has no extradition arrangement with Taiwan, and is proposing to amend its extradition law to fix that.
But to do that, it can’t just set up an extradition agreement with Taiwan – it has to include all of China because technically, HK is part of China, which also officially considers Taiwan to be part of China.
This would mean HK residents could be extradited to China.
At least 1.03 million HK citizens are concerned about that because we all know that (1) features of China’s judicial system include torture, forced confessions, and trumped up evidence, and (2) under China’s rule of law, making jokes about Xi Jinping counts as trying to overthrow the government.

Beijing-approved Chief Executive Carrie Lam – who has been pushing for the amendment – swears that (1) the amendment will only apply to major crimes committed in China like theft and murder, so Beijing will not be able to use the law to punish HK people for political speech that would be illegal on the mainland, (2) HK will have full control over which extradition requests are approved, and (3) HK courts will have the final word.

Opponents don’t really believe her. And there’s no reason they should.

1. For a start, in the past 22 years since the handover, numerous Beijing officials have made it perfectly clear – repeatedly – that when it comes to how the HK govt runs its affairs (especially when it comes to democratic election processes) it is Beijing who has the final say precisely because they own us – we’re part of China, our autonomy is not absolute, and don’t ever forget that.

2. Meanwhile, the HK govt has in the past blocked certain Chinese dissidents from entering the city, and recently refused to renew the visa of a foreign journalist – and denied him entry back into HK – because he moderated an event where the main speaker was a pro-independence activist (whose political party has been banned). The govt has always claimed these actions were not due to pressure from Beijing – but not a lot of people believe that.

3. Also, while theoretically you would have to be in China when your alleged crime took place, in reality China has been known to finesse that particular detail.

So when CE Lam says, “Don’t worry, we have the power to turn down any request that looks politically motivated,” it’s not particularly reassuring. Even if she’s sincere, it’s hard to imagine Beijing talking no for an answer, or CE Lam standing up to them if they pressure her to change her mind.

4. It’s even less reassuring when remembering that the last time HK had a protest anywhere near this size (2003), it was over a proposed National Security bill that would, among other things, “prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government” – with Beijing of course having the final say on what counted as any of those things.

After the protest the bill was shelved, but Article 23 of the Basic Law (our mini-constitution) requires us to pass one sooner or later. And after the Occupy stunt of 2014 and the subsequent rise of the tiny pro-independence faction, some pro-Beijing officials have suggested we put that back on the table soon. You can guess who might be the first people or groups charged under that law.

So you can see why people aren’t feeling very reassured by CE Lam’s claims that It Can’t Happen Here and to just trust her that everything will be fine. Ultimately, it’s not so much that people don’t trust the bill – they don’t trust Beijing to adhere to the law’s safeguards or respect HK’s decisions on politically motivated cases. And they don’t trust CE Lam because (like all CEs) she was vetted and elected by 1200 electors approved by Beijing.

So … what happens now?

Well, for a start, CE Lam isn’t backing down. The extradition bill is due for a second and third reading tomorrow, and LegCo has been instructed to have a final vote by Thursday next week.

Meanwhile, another protest is being planned for tomorrow. Over 100 businesses – including some of the major banks in town – have publicly announced they will either close or adopt flexi-hours so that their employees can attend the protest. That right there should tell you how serious the opposition to this bill is.

In fact, pretty much no one apart from CE Lam, the pro-establishment parties and Beijing itself is in favour of the bill. Even Taiwan has said they don’t want HK to pass the bill just so they can prosecute the murder suspect – they would much rather have a one-off arrangement.

So, the big questions are:

1. Why is CE Lam hellbent on pushing this bill when she knows how immensely unpopular it is?
2. Has she considered what the reaction of the public and the business sector is going to be if it does pass?
3. Does she have a contingency plan to deal with that?

We’ll find out. But it’s hard to believe she doesn’t know how divisive this bill is, and that passing it is going to make things worse. Granted, it’s not like her re-election is at stake. But does she really want to risk serious social upheaval by ignoring all those concerns or pretending they don’t matter simply because she thinks she’s right? Does she really think passing this bill is so important that it's worth ripping the city apart?

The only hope now is that LegCo votes against the bill – which isn’t likely since the pro-Beijing camp outnumbers the opposition by a pretty big margin. Maybe they’ll feel enough voter pressure to rethink their position. Maybe they won’t.

All I’m really sure of is that between now and the final vote, we’re in for an ugly week.

Into the aggro,

This is dF

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: Tung Chung
Current Music: Ambient highway
Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1525340.html

Recently we lost another bookstore chain in Hong Kong: Page One, whose home base is in Singapore. The last one in Singapore shut down last year. The last one here in Hong Kong shut down last month.

Last week, word circulated on the Facebooks that Page One was having a receivership sale in one of the old industrial warehouses in Kwai Hing, with 40% discounts on everything. Of course I had to go check it out.

Here's what I thought it would look like.

Here’s what it actually looked like.

It’s literally books and magazines piled randomly onto pallets, with barely enough aisle space to walk around even before you fill it with people.

Which explains the crowd-control queue out front when I arrived.

It was not a good experience. I enjoy scavenging for books, but it’s a drag when there’s no logic or order, most of the books are buried and the venue is really crowded, so you basically end up skimming the tops of the piles and go for pot luck.

My expectations weren’t just set by the flyer photo. Years ago, when Borders closed shop in Singapore, I was lucky enough to be in town when they had a similar clearance sale in a rented warehouse space. All the books were arranged in boxes with the spines facing up so you could at least see what they were. They weren’t organized by category, but you could at least see what was available.

That wasn’t the case here.

Anyway, I was damned if I was going to go all the way to Kwai Hing, brave the crowd and come away empty-handed.

So here’s my booty.

The one about Kim Jong Il is actually one I’ve wanted to read for awhile. I’ve read Priest and McCarthy before, but I’ve never read Umberto Eco, and while I do plan to read The Name Of the Rose next year, I thought this book of essays might be worthwhile.

Living in chaos,

This is dF

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Disco Bay
Current Music: Ambient Christmas tunes
Crossposts: http://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1275768.html

As some of you may know, I fly a lot. And one of things I do to kill time waiting for my flight is check out the airport bookstores. It’s rare I actually buy a book, since I usually carry one with me wherever I go. But I have been in situations where I needed one. So I like to visit the bookstores just so I can see what book I’d end up buying if I truly needed one.

I was in Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport last week for a flight to Jakarta, and I couldn't help noticing a lot of the bookshops seemed to be gone. There used to be two big ones and a bunch of smaller ones. From the check-in counter to the gate, I only saw one small kiosk, and I started to wonder, am I imagining things or did they really close down most of the bookshops?

They really did.

There are – or were – two main bookstore chains in Chek Lap Kok: Page One and Relay. According to the South China Morning Post, Page One is out, and Relay has been cut down to five small kiosks.

The official reason from the Airport Authority is “change in reading habit and advancement in technology” – in other words, most flyers read Kindles or watch videos or play games on their smartphones. (I don't, but then I'm not "most people".)

The unofficial reason (i.e. the unsubstantiated rumor) is that Page One was carrying some of the books that were connected to those disappearing booksellers – i.e. the books saying not so nice things about Xi Jinpeng. So Beijing wants HK to police its airport bookstores. Maybe.

There’s no proof, of course, and personally I doubt that was the reason. The leases did expire this month, and all bookstore chains are going through similar pain points when it comes to book sales. Page One said they bailed for business reasons, and given that they’ve closed other shops (even in their home base of Singapore, they closed their last bookstore a few years ago), it’s not hard to believe they’ve decided to give up on their airport stores.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that a new bookstore chain has been granted a contract to take over some of the vacated bookshop space – Chung Hwa, which is based in mainland China.

See what they did there?

Read all about it,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Causeway Bay
Current Music: Prince, "Batdance"
Crossposts: http://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1219767.html

Here in Hong Kong, Sam Hui is generally recognized as one of the founders of what’s known as Cantopop, as he was one of the first and most successful singer-songwriters of the early 70s to sing pop/rock songs in the local Cantonese dialect instead of Mandarin, as was the tradition beforehand.

One of my favorite songs of his is “Students”. I don’t understand much of the lyrics, but I love the chord progression and key changes.

"許冠傑 Sam Hui - 学生哥" (Watch on YouTube)

Turns out it’s actually a cover version of this song, which was a big hit in South Korea in the mid-60s and still gets a lot of tribute/karaoke action to this very day.

"정시스터즈 워싱턴광장 1965" (Watch on YouTube)

And it turns out that that song – the title of which translates to “Washington Square” – is actually an adaptation of this instrumental recorded a year earlier by "folk-Dixie" outfit The Village Stompers.

"The Village Stompers- 1963 - Washington Square-" (Watch on YouTube)

It’s an interesting evolution. Someone in Korea basically took an American instrumental and wrote some original Korean lyrics for it, then ten years later Sam Hui took that version and wrote some original Cantonese lyrics for it.

(I’m assuming he swiped the music from the Korean version rather than the US version. My conclusion is based on the fact that the Korean version contains one minor chord change from the original, and the Sam Hui version uses the Korean chord changes.)

Isn't this interesting?

All around the world,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Disco Bay
Current Music: See above
Crossposts: http://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1216010.html

Previously on Senseless Acts Of Bloggery:

ITEM: Hong Kong bookstore employees are disappearing.

Or at least five of them have. Four went missing in October last year. The fifth disappeared last week.

All five worked with the same bookstore – Causeway Bay Bookstore, which just happens to specialize in books that are banned in mainland China (but not HK) because they’re critical of the central govt, especially President Xi Jinping.

That was as of January 8, by which time one of them – Lee Bo – was said to be in China (but without his travel document) helping the police with “an investigation”.

Here’s what’s happened since then:

1. Lee Bo has met with his wife and written a couple of open letters telling HK to stop investigating his disappearance, he really is helping with an investigation and it’s not really a big deal anyway.

This week, Lee appeared on Chinese TV explaining how he got into China without his travel document:

"I was worried that upon reaching the mainland and taking part in the lawful investigation, and testifying against others, it would lead to them and their families getting angry with me and this would not be good for me and my family, so to guarantee our safety, I chose to be smuggled in," he said.

Lee also took the trouble to publicly renounce his UK citizenship – which may or may not have something to do with the fact that the UK government has expressed grave concerns over one its passport holders being abducted into China, which would be a breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong that defines the current “One Party, Two Systems” arrangement. By sheer coincidence, Beijing does not appreciate this insinuation. So it’s nice of Lee to voluntarily settle the issue for them with no coaching whatsoever.

2. Gui Minhai – who was in Thailand when he disappeared – later popped up on CCTV (China’s state broadcaster) making a tearful confession that he turned himself in to Chinese police after he killed someone in China while drunk-driving – 12 years ago. While a friend of Gui’s confirmed the drunk-driving incident really happened, a lot of people are finding it hard to believe he just decided to go turn himself in – and just two days after two of his associates had also vanished.

3. The other three – Lui Por, Cheung Chi-ping and Lam Wing-kee – turned up in jail in China. They’ve also appeared on TV confessing crimes of “illegal book-trading” – i.e. selling their books critical of Xi Jingpeng on the mainland. Also, Lam took the trouble to point out that, by the way, the allegations in the books were all completely untrue:

"They were downloaded from the Internet, and were pieced together from magazines. They have generated lots of rumours in society and brought a bad influence."

The three were set to be be released on bail sometime this week.

So.

As you might expect, few people outside of the Chinese govt are taking the TV confessions seriously, as China has a long history of making examples of critics via public confessions that seem strikingly tailored to back whatever specific points Beijing wants to make by arresting them.

In any case, unofficially (i.e. this is according to other sources, not the official police line), a narrative is starting to unfold: Gui Minhai allegedly set up a distribution outlet in Shenzhen to sell banned books in China. The other three in jail were allegedly involved somehow, and Lee Bo – who allegedly had no knowledge of any of this – was allegedly recruited to allegedly help investigate the case.

Allegedly.

There’s still plenty we don’t know yet, and what we do know seems dubious. And we may never know the whole story. There are three things we do know for sure:

1. Two of the four people who ended up in jail were not in mainland China when they disappeared. And we know Lee Bo somehow got into mainland China despite not having his travel document with him – possibly even volunteering to be abducted (which seems like an odd thing to agree to after working for a publishing company and bookstore highly critical of Beijing – to say nothing of giving up his British passport).

Which again raises the central question of the whole affair: how did the three of them who were outside of China suddenly end up there?

Because there’s only a few possible options there, and one of them is this: the Chinese police are kidnapping people who are not Chinese nationals that they want to put in jail.

Which is, needless to say, alarming.

2. The HK government is very unlikely to pursue the matter. The HK Police Commissioner has met with Lee Bo, and has said he doesn’t believe that Lee is telling the whole story, but with Lee unwilling to press charges or make any accusations and basically telling them that there is no case, the police don’t have any choice but to drop it.

So, as usual, it’s a case of two governments – both of which have gone out of their way to undermine HK public trust in them – saying, “Trust us, there’s nothing wrong here.”

3. Local delivery companies are a lot more nervous about shipping banned books to mainland China than they used to be. Which I'm sure is one of the desired results of all this, as far as Beijing is concerned.

Developing …

Would I lie to you,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Disco Bay
Current Music: Cheap Trick, "Hello There"
Crossposts: http://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1210392.html

Or at least there was, on the first day of the Lunar New Year.

The short short version: in Mong Kok, the police decided to crack down on illegal hawkers selling street snacks. (By “crack down” I mean “tell them firmly to get off the street and stop selling their food”.) Some people in the crowd complained. The crowd grew larger, and when the police tried to clear them out, they were pelted with water bottles, garbage cans, wooden pallets and bricks ripped up from the sidewalks. Things got violent enough that one cop pulled his gun and fired a couple of warning shots in the air. From there it got ugly.

You can read the details here and here.

No one was shot or killed, but it was easily the worst episode of violence I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve lived here.

A few points from me:

1. For people wondering about the #FishballRevolution tag that’s been circulating on the social medias, let be clear: this wasn’t about the street hawkers.

2. For a start, the street hawkers didn’t initiate the protest against the police. That was apparently the work of at least one radical political party, Hong Kong Indigenous, one of several radical “localist” parties that emerged from the Umbrella protests. Their basic line is: fuck you Beijing, stay out of our affairs, and since the HK Govt won't listen and we know peaceful protests don’t get results, we’ll take it to the next level.

3. To an extent, the radical parties themselves are symptomatic of bigger problems in HK. Their membership is mainly angry young people whose prospects aren’t all that great – the education system is letting them down and it’s getting harder to get by as salaries don’t keep up with the cost of living and property/rent prices reach increasingly insane levels. And on top of that, they’ve realized that HK democracy is a rigged game, and the current HK leadership has been no help at all. Which is another reason why I don’t think the riot was about street hawkers. That’s simply not big enough of an issue to justify this level of violence.

4. Even if localist parties did care about the right of street hawkers to operate without a license, it’s unclear to me how beating the shit out of the police is going to further that cause. Even the hawkers have condemned the violence, saying it probably cost them more money and business than if the police had just told them to go home. So either HKI is a bunch of thugs who are using street hawkers as an excuse to start a fight, or they’re idiots who aren’t smart enough to think their political plans through. Either way, it’s not very flattering.

5. There’s little doubt from the video that the radicals were ready for a fight. Those surgical masks, hoodies, pointed sticks and such didn’t materialize out of nowhere. And you simply cannot claim self-defense when you are seen on video actively chasing the police down and bombarding them with rocks, pallets, glass bottles and metal garbage cans.

6. People who hate the current HK Govt (largely because of the Umbrella thing) are making excuses for the ~~protesters~~ rioters by saying the police started it by trying to shut down the hawkers and then clearing out the people trying to stop them from doing so. Which is like saying that when a cop pulls me over for speeding and my response is to kick his ass, it’s the cop’s fault for pulling me over in the first place like he has a right to do that and anyway speeding’s not a major crime or anything. Which is a stupid argument.

7. As for the claims that the police used excessive force, I’ll admit I’m biased here because I’m from the US, where the bar for “excessive force” is way, way higher. But given what the HK police were up against, I’d say they acted with far more restraint than may have been warranted. I’ll add too that of the 124 people who were injured enough to require hospital treatment, 90 of them were police officers. So if anyone was excessive, it wasn’t the cops.

8. Yes, there’s anecdotal evidence some of the cops got a little indiscriminate with their batons and pepper spray. They’re probably true. But that's not policy – that's happens when yr outnumbered and in the middle of a riot fighting for yr life.

9. The same goes for the cop who fired his weapon in the air. Irresponsible? Probably – those bullets go somewhere. But that still doesn’t justify the violence on the side of the rioters – which incidentally had achieved riot-level by the time that cop decided to pull his gun.

10. As always, reason and facts don't matter – HK politics is so badly polarized right now that people will inevitably twist the facts to fit their narrative or pet conspiracy theory. Same as it ever was – excessive violence is always justified as long as it’s directed against people you think deserve it, and even when it’s not, it’s the fault of the goddamned irresponsible political opposition. The same will likely be true of the subsequent investigation.

Which means we’ll probably see more of this. We’re already seeing exploding garbage cans outside LegCo, and we’re already seeing students forming mobs over the appointment of University presidents who don’t pass their political litmus tests. In their minds they're justified in taking any measures necessary to get what they want, and they’re oblivious to the real-world consequences of their actions. It’s a sad and stupid state of affairs.

If you listen to fools, the mob rules

This is dF

Current Mood: distressed
Current Location: Disco Bay
Current Music: ELO, "Sweet Is The Night"
Crossposts: http://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1208028.html

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May 2025

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Page Summary

OLD AND BUSTED: RULE OF LAW. NEW HOTNESS: RULE OF FEAR.
ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 396 (ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
IT’S 2020 AND WE REMEMBER TIANANMEN SQUARE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
MINNEAPOLIS IS THE NEW HONG KONG
ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 395: HOW MUCH WOULD *YOU* PAY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY?
ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 394: NATIONAL INSECURITY EDITION
ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 393: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK EDITION
I KNOW COVID-19 IS KILLING TENS OF THOUSANDS BUT I HAVE FEELINGS TOO
ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 392 (KEEP YR DISTANCE EDITION)
ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 391 (DARTH PLAGUEIS EDITION)
A WELL-INTENTIONED BUT SOMEWHAT MISPLACED HONG KONG THANKSGIVING
ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 390 (DC ELECTION EDITION)
WILD IN THE STREETS (ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 389)
FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND
1 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS, Y'ALL
THE WORST BOOK SALE IN THE WORLD
WHY ARE ALL THE BOOKSHOPS GONE? (AIRPORT EDITION)
BAD COVER VERSION #65: FROM WASHINGTON SQUARE TO KOREA AND HONG KONG
THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING HONG KONG BOOKSELLERS (UPDATE)
THERE’S A RIOT GOING ON (HONG KONG EDITION)

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Entries tagged with long gone in hong kong

OLD AND BUSTED: RULE OF LAW. NEW HOTNESS: RULE OF FEAR.

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 396 (ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

IT’S 2020 AND WE REMEMBER TIANANMEN SQUARE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

MINNEAPOLIS IS THE NEW HONG KONG

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 395: HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY?

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 394: NATIONAL INSECURITY EDITION

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 393: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK EDITION

I KNOW COVID-19 IS KILLING TENS OF THOUSANDS BUT I HAVE FEELINGS TOO

ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 392 (KEEP YR DISTANCE EDITION)

ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 391 (DARTH PLAGUEIS EDITION)

A WELL-INTENTIONED BUT SOMEWHAT MISPLACED HONG KONG THANKSGIVING

ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 390 (DC ELECTION EDITION)

WILD IN THE STREETS (ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 389)

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

1 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS, Y'ALL

THE WORST BOOK SALE IN THE WORLD

WHY ARE ALL THE BOOKSHOPS GONE? (AIRPORT EDITION)

BAD COVER VERSION #65: FROM WASHINGTON SQUARE TO KOREA AND HONG KONG

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING HONG KONG BOOKSELLERS (UPDATE)

THERE’S A RIOT GOING ON (HONG KONG EDITION)

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