Standing Up for the Victims of San Uk Ling, and for Hong Kong in general

A lot of people were at Edinburgh Place this evening...

And so too was this statue!

Carrie Lam held a "community dialogue session" at Queen Elizabeth Stadium yesterday evening.  One participant reported that he went into the event with few expectations and came away with just as few new answers.  Indeed, what most people ended up primarily taking away from the event was the sense that the extradition bill/pro-democracy protests really do have a lot of public support/participation as, of the 30 individuals randomly selected to ask questions of Carrie Lam, 24 were identified as "yellow" (i.e., pro-protesters/democracy), 2 as neutral, and 4 as "blue" (i.e., pro-police/government) in various media analyses. 

Throw in the fact that one of the "blue" questioners -- specifically, the one who had made a point to declare "I am not afraid the police" -- turned out to be a police officer (or, at the very least, a former auxillary police officer) very possibly planted into the "community dialogue session"'s admitted "civilian" crowd of 150 people and: it really emphasizes how widespread is the feeling of discontent that people have with the Hong Kong government; and shows how the government really is resorting to deceit these days.  And when all of this is brought together, small wonder then that people just don't feel that they can trust the Hong Kong government -- to tell the truth, never mind do the right thing.

As it so happened, one of the few "revelations" that Carrie Lam made yesterday evening was her stating that the San Uk Ling Holding Centre is no longer being used by the Hong Kong police to detain protesters.  Given the distrust people have for Hong Kong's Chief Executive In Name Only and the fact that too much police abuse had already occured at that facility close to the Hong Kong-Mainland China border, however, one just knew that this would not stop thousands of people from going to a "Stand Up for the Victims of San Uk Ling" rally at Edinburgh Place this evening that had been announced several days ago.  

A note: the police have denied that any abuses have occurred there.  However, I think it plain who the attendees at tonight rally believe more: that is, those arrested protesters held for a time at San Uk Ling (among them Ventus Lau, who I had last seen sitting at the end point of the Kwun Tong to Kowloon Bay protest march he had organized on August 24th) and such as the lawyer who went there to meet with his client and publicly recounted their experiences there this evening. 

More than incidentally, tonight's well-attended rally marks the beginning of what will be a number of key protest events scheduled to take place over the next few days.  Not all of them have received a Letter of No Objection from the police -- but I doubt that this will deter too many protesters now; this not least since the sense is that the Hong Kong police's banning of protests is part of a strategy of violent suppression as well as a restriction of people's right of assembly (which, lest we forget, actually is supposed to be guaranteed -- along with freedoms of procession, demonstration and speech -- in Article 27 of the Basic Law), and standing up for Hong Kong is something those of us who love Hong Kong actively need to do these days.