physical representatives of the Hong Kong spirit
and Communist China in Hong Kong respectively
In all honesty, the closer you get to it,
the less impressive the Liason Office seems
And the obstacles erected at its entrance sure don't help to make
it look welcoming and open, and actually makes it look besieged!
In much of the world these days, it's hard to take one's attention away from the Wuhan coronavirus these days. We're talking, after all, about a novel coronavirus whose confirmed number of infections passed the two million mark two days ago, recorded global deaths from it exceeded 140,000 late yesterday (or, actually, earlier, since the
authorities in Wuhan revised the city's coronavirus death toll in the
past 24 hours or so and added 1,290 fatalities to the old number) and has
caused more than 100 countries worldwide to institute a full or partial
lockdown to try to slow down its onslaught and spread within their
populace.
With the likes of the USA and Britain having by no means "flattened" their coronavirus "curves" yet, and Singapore having recorded its highest single day case numbers yesterday, the same day that Japan finally declared a national emergency, it is obvious that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over. At the same time though, Taiwan provides some hope and cheer with three days this week seeing no new recorded cases in the country. And there also was some relief in Hong Kong with daily recorded case numbers in their single digits this week (including a solitary one yesterday and four, all of them people with recent travel histories, today).
Sadly,
in Hong Kong, the glimmer of light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel
has also come on days that provide dark reminders of the battle that
still needs to be waged against the encroaching repression of Beijing
and its local Hong Kong underlings. The day before China's National Security Education Day, Reuters
put out a special investigative report into Hong Kong's judiciary that
had senior judges, leading lawyers and diplomats based in the city
spilling the beans about how "The independence of Hong Kong’s
judicial system is under assault from the Communist Party leadership in
Beijing"; and that, according to one local judge, "the senior mainland
judges... just don’t get Hong Kong at all... They always want to know
why Hong Kong is so
confused and chaotic, and not ‘patriotic.’"
On Wednesday, a video clip was released showing new Liason Office chief Luo Huining -- whose appointment was announced back
on an early January day that the likes of me began getting a sense that
there was something happening in Wuhan that we needed to be pretty
worried about -- alleging that "Hong
Kong’s pro-democracy movement was a “major blow” to the rule of law,
threatening the one country, two systems principle under which it
operates with China, and was influenced by pro-independence and radical
violent forces." Along with raising the spectre of Article 23 once more, he also called upon "society" to "move
the defence line forward" and "create a social and public opinion
environment favourable to struggle against behaviours threatening HK's
stability and national security".
That same day, Carrie
Lam expectedly followed Luo's lead by also blaming Hong Kongers seeking
democracy for Hong Kong for threatening national (i.e., Communist
China's) security. So much for Article 22 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, which reads as follows: "No department of the Central People's Government and no
province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the Central
Government may interfere in the affairs which the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region administers on its own in accordance with this Law."
More than one
person wondered why -- besides it being China's National Security
Education Day this past Wednesday -- these concerted calls were being
made at this time, when such as the Wuhan coronavirus surely poses a
bigger threat to Hong Kong (and the world) currently. But while others
pondered, at least one person rushed to take action the very next day:
by reacting to Luo's dogwhistle call "to move the defence line forward" by stabbing pro-democracy activist "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung as he was being interviewed by a RTHK journalist outside the Liason Office.
Fortunately, it looks like "Long Hair" suffered only a minor injury -- unlike with the likes of Legislative
Councillor Andrew Chiu (who, lest we forget, had part of an ear bitten
off by a Putonghua-speaking pro-Beijinger, last November) and Civil
Human Rights Front convenor Jimmy Sham (left bleeding from his head and
arms, and wheelchair bound for a time after being attacked by men
wielding hammers last October). Still, a reminder was served that
there are more dangerous threats to Hong Kong's overall well-being than
the Wuhan coronavirus lurking about and impatiently waiting to strike
more.
Also worrying is that the Liason Office doubled down today on its attack on "One Country, Two Systems" today by declaring that it is not subject to Basic Law restrictions. And because so many of those who call it home aren't going to go down without a fight, it really is looking more and more like Hong Kong will return to not only being a City of Protest but also a City on Fire after it wins its fight with the coronavirus unleashed on the world by the same regime that has killed so many millions more people over the course of its existence. :(
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