Wednesday, November 27, 2019

An uneasy peace currently reigns -- but for how long more?

Jockey Club Auditorium in happier times
 
View (including of the upper section of the International 
Commerce Centre) from the campus one fine day last year
 
 
With an uneasy peace prevailing at PolyU along with the rest of Hong Kong over the past few days, there have been multiple calls made for the sensely siege to end and release of the remaining individually effectively trapped there by the police.  But rather than retreat from the scene, the police have announced their intent to set foot on the university campus tomorrow.  
 
In other words: instead of the results of Sunday's District Council Election giving them some pause and reason to question -- or even reverse -- their actions thus far,  it seems that Carrie Lam is continuing to be deaf to pro-democracy protesters' demands and the government, including its police arm, are going to continue to provoke already angry people.  Indeed, in recent days, harsh sentences have been meted out to protesters involved in the 2016 "Fishball Revolution" as well as this summer and news of it looking into requiring civil servants to take oaths of allegiance indicates that the government actually is doubling down in its actions against seekers of democracy who wish to exercise freedoms supposedly guaranteed them in the Basic Law.

 
(Almost needless to say: I sincerely hope that Hong Kong protesters can retain their sense of humor, and that the police don't go crazy once more doing such as fire thousands of rounds of tear gas in a single day.  Actually, it's really nuts that the latter don't seem to have realized yet -- or plain don't care -- that their doing so only makes more Hong Kongers more determined to rebel against a government that is not serving the majority of the population.)      

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