Monday, June 22, 2020

Still fighting against the incursions of the Wuhan coronavirus and Communist Chinese regime into Hong Kong

Together, we fight the virus...

...this even while we longer how much longer it will be before 
the axe falls on Hong Kong and a significant percentage 
of the populace will end up behind bars :(

After several days of single digit and even zero new Wuhan coronavirus cases reported daily, Hong Kong suddenly had a whopping 30 new confirmed cases today.  Unlike back in March and early April, however, there's little panic this time around -- at least for now -- about the onset of a second (or would it be third now?) wave because all today's new confirmed coronavirus cases are imports rather than local transmissions.  

I do hope though that those individuals who decided that it was safe to stop wearing masks last week are going to start wearing them again.  Granted that they are in the minority (indeed, I'd estimate that non-mask wearer are, at most, 20 percent of Hong Kong's population) but I still do find it irritating that there still are people who don't realize -- or, maybe, it's more a case of don't care -- to help protect others as well as themselves by wearing masks while out in public   After all this time, surely we should know what's the score with regards to the Wuhan coronavirus and go about fighting it together?

Also, much as I hate to point it out, some of the most reluctant mask wearers in Hong Kong continue to be expats; particularly those who tend to prefer to stick to their own kind and tend to stay in the more international sections of the territory.  Last Thursday, I went to Central for the first time in ages and was quite shocked to see a discernibly higher number of mask-less people walking about as well as hanging around in the vicinity of bars; and a friend who works in Central but lives in Wan Chai told me that she reckons that the area around Lockhart Road has the lowest percentage of people wearing masks of all.     


Thus it was that there were no large protests on June 9th, 12th and 16th -- and even while a significant amount of people turned out to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4th and the death of Marco Leung on June 15th, they were nothing like what surely would have been the case if Hong Kongers were safe to freely assemble and exercise their other supposedly guaranteed (under several Articles of the Basic Law) freedoms.   Furthermore, not only does it look unlikely that the annual July 1st protest march will be allowed to take place this year but it is increasingly looking likely that China will bring into effect the national security legislation it plans for Hong Kong by then.    

With regards to that national security law: It's been excruciating -- like Chinese water torture? -- to be presnted with dribs and drabs of information and speculation as to what it actually will entail, including by local government officials who actually haven't been seen any drafts of it, never mind been involved in its drafting.  And this despite my having tried to spare myself from reading detailed analyses of it (or, rather, what it's speculated that it will be) since I agree with lawyer-political commentator Kevin Yam that: "There’s nothing to analyse. It’s just whatever they say it is. And if they cannot make it whatever they say it is when they want something, they will just change it in whatever way they like. End of story."


In the thread of the latter Tweet though, you have others serving up reminders that "We didn’t fight becoz there’s hope; we fought hard so that there can be hope"and, also, that the "CCP is really good at using helplessness... to control ppl.  Don't fall into the trap. Keep fighting".  And even while there are people mulling leaving Hong Kong and urging others to do so too, you also get the stubborn, defiant folks who ask: "Why should we be the ones forced to leave and not those bastards[?] fuck them so much".  In summary: many of us are hurting but we also aren't prepared to go (down or away) without a fight -- precisely because we love Hong Kong so.

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