Hong Kong Olympic joy threatened by killjoys unwilling to take advantage of golden opportunities to bring society together

Yet another emotional rollercoaster of a day in Hong Kong

 

There was more glory to Hong Kong at the Tokyo Olympics today thanks to swimmer Siobhan Haughey.  Just two days after becoming Hong Kong's first ever medalist in a swim event, she won another Olympic silver medal -- this time in the 100 meters freestyle final.  In so doing, she became Hong Kong's first ever Olympic multi-medalist.  Together with gold medal-winning fencer Edgar Cheung Ka-long, Haughey also has doubled Hong Kong's historical medal count in the Olympics (as prior to these Olympics, Hong Kong's athletes had won a total of three Olympic medals – one gold, one silver and a bronze)!    

 

This morning also saw badminton mixed double players Tse Ying-suet and Tang Chun-man bid to garner Hong Kong more glory in the bronze medal match.  And although they were ultimately unsuccessful, I reckon they did Hong Kongers proud by putting up a good fight and pushing their Japanese opponents pretty much all the way in a contest that I can imagine would have been exciting to watch for neutrals as well as those of us with a vested interest in the results.

 

Even as I was watching the Olympic events (on TV) though, I must admit to feeling butterflies in my stomach: less so from what was unfolding in the sporting arenas and much more because the verdict with regards to Tong Ying-kit -- the first man charged and then put on trial under China's national security law for Hong Kong -- was scheduled to be announced at 3pm this same day.  At dinner last night with friends, a Mainland Chinese-born friend vouchsafed that, if the trial had taken place on the other side of the Hong Kong-Mainland China border, Tong would be sentenced to life imprisonment.  In view of his only being 24 years of age (born in 1997 -- the same year as Olympians Haughey and Cheung, as it so happens), how absolutely tragic would such a sentence be.  

 

As it turned out, the judges for Hong Kong's first ever security law case look to have ignored the prosecution's suggestion to look to Mainland Chinese legal practices when deciding on the sentence to give out.  Even so, the six and a half years jail term for the incitement to secession charge and eight-year prison term for committing acts of terror is plenty harsh indeed; and this even after having Tong serve part of those terms concurrently makes it so that he will spend a total of nine years behind bars (in addition to the one year or so that he's already spent behind bars while awaiting trial).  

 

We're talking after all about a young man who is a first offender and also someone who volunteered as a first aider during the extradition bill protests.  Nicknamed "Heavy Armour", he is credited with having helped people and looked after injured folks hit by the police's pepper spray and blue dye (the latter from water cannons).  Also, look carefully at the photo of him on his motorbike -- with which he allegedly deliberately rammed into the police and you'll notice a red cross badge and related symbols on the bag strapped on him.

The sentence meted out against Tong appears particularly unjust when one compares it to the treatment accorded to the policeman who very obviously deliberately rammed his motorcycle into protestors back on November 11th, 2019.  Just minutes before Tong Ying-kit's sentence was made known this afternoon, the Hong Kong Free Press published an article about that offending officer only having been issued with a “suitable written advice”.  Yes, you read that right: no jail time for him; no sacking; no real black mark on his record; etc.

 

For further examples of contemporary Hong Kong (in)justice, consider that today also has seen the police arresting a man on suspicion of insulting the national anthem when crowds gathered in a shopping mall to watch Edgar Cheung Ka-long's gold medal awards ceremony.  Yes, there now is a law against booing or otherwise disrespecting The March of the Volunteers (passed, lest we forget, on June 4th of last year).  But in the videos I've seen (and heard) (like this one), people are delightedly chanting "We are Hong Kong" rather than negatively making abusive sounds when the Putonghua language song played!  (Also, there appear to be hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the venue concerned.  So how does one decide on arresting just one particular individual for the perceived offence?!)

As Hong Kong Free Press' Tom Grundy was moved to Tweet upon hearing that the police were investigating the crowd assembled to watch the Olympics at Kwun Tong's APM mall, "For those who thought the Hong Kong authorities might seize a golden opportunity to bring society together in a moment of city-wide unity and goodwill..."  When you add this to the badminton player black attire fiasco, one can't help conclude that there are a good number of killjoys in Hong Kong -- and that they tend to be over in the pro-Beijing camp.

 

To summarize: in a happier, alternative universe, Hong Kongers would be able to be 100 percent happy about their fellow Hong Kongers' exploits at the Tokyo Olympics. Instead, Hong Kong's Olympic glory has actually been bittersweet. As Bloomberg's Matthew Brooker explains about the scenes that have unfolded in recent days of Hong Kongers gathered in malls throughout the territory to cheer on the likes of Edgar Cheung and Siobhan Haughey, and more:

For anyone from outside Hong Kong, the sight of local fans cheering a home-town favorite must have seemed unremarkable. For anyone familiar with the city’s past two years of trauma, it was striking. Such gatherings have been vanishingly infrequent since 2019, when shopping malls were a popular site for flash protests. Crowds often assembled to sing “Glory to Hong Kong,” an unofficial anthem that has since been banned in schools. Hong Kong’s Covid rules still limit gatherings in public places to no more than our people, an interdiction that has been enforced zealously by the police when there is any hint of a political motive...

It has reached a point where the mildest assertion of Hong Kong idiosyncrasy is at risk of being branded potentially subversive or secessionist. Yet the Olympics is a reminder of how a distinctive and different Hong Kong identity might have sat comfortably within a more expansive conception of Chinese nationhood.

The high point of China’s popularity in Hong Kong came during the 2008 Games in Beijing, when observance of “one country, two systems” caused a groundswell of good feeling toward the mainland and the city’s residents were happy to adopt athletes of both teams as their own. Hong Kongers were far more willing to identify as citizens of the People’s Republic when they sensed a willingness to accept the city without insisting on changing it.

That makes the Hong Kong team’s presence in Tokyo poignant, pointing to the opportunity missed, the road not traveled, in which a more tolerant and more confident China embraced the nation’s cultural diversity rather than seeking to stamp it out in pursuit of socially engineered Communist orthodoxy. For the truth is that Hong Kong is different, and this is its strength and its value to China. The city is an outward-facing society that has been exposed to the influence of multiple global currents and traditions. That heritage was brought home again on Wednesday in the form of silver-medal-winning swimmer Haughey, the daughter of an Irish father and a Hong Kong mother.