Focusing on Hong Kong matters 22 years after 9/11

  

Remaining flood debris at Sham Shui Po earlier today

 

Half a week after the Hong Kong Observatory first put out the black rainstorm signal late on Thursday night, people are still talking about the catastrophic flooding that Hong Kong has experienced in recent days.  And while the worst does appear to be over (for much of the territory -- with the Hong Kong Observatory finally cancelling the landslip warning at 8.15pm today, 92 hours and 30 minutes after it was first announced!), the weather forecast for the next nine days has rain in it still and there has been more flooding today in the likes of Kwun Tong, the Sai Kung District and Tseung Kwan O!

 

I'm not sure whether I'm in the minority with regards to not actually having personally experienced a flooding situation in the past few days.  But as I said to an overseas friend who enquired how I was doing here in Hong Kong, I feel like I've been living in a parallel world of sorts since I've not even personally seen significant flooding -- as opposed to mere "localized water accumulation" -- when out on the streets in recent days. 

Of course, I've not deliberately gone over to known disaster areas for photo ops or what-have-you the way that certain government officials have done so.  (A message to those government officials who think they can fool people by posing for photographs that are supposed to look like they're involved in the cleanup: you need to look more sweaty, muddied and actually dirty!)

 

At the same time, I've also not completely stayed cooped up in my apartment for all of these past few days!  Yet it was only over in Sham Shui Po this afternoon that I saw not (completely) cleared flood debris -- with it being entirely possible that the flood debris I saw was fresh from more floods today!  Also, interestingly enough, today and yesterday, I've seen buildings that have experienced power outages and other problems.  

Still, most of the city looks to be back to "normal"/business -- including, alas, the law courts.  Consequently, news from the courts today includes four former student leaders of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), who originally faced one count of advocating terrorism, having pleaded guilty today to a less serious alternative charge -- one which still see the quartet of Kinson Cheung, Charles Kwok, Chris Todorovski and Anthony Yung being handed sentences of up to seven years imprisonment each!  All of which seems really excessive since their "crime" -- committed at a HKU student union council meeting on July 7th, 2021, involved the student body passing a resolution expressing sympathy for the death of Leung Kin-fai, who took his life shortly after he stabbed a uniformed officer six days previously on July 1st, the 24th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover by the British to China!

 

Also today at another law court, Fung Ching-wah, was "handed a four-year jail term for rioting and perverting the course of justice"; with the offences concerned being related to a protest in Tsuen Wan on October 1st, 2019.  (Yes, many people are still being tried and sentenced for actions that took place in 2019 some four years on.)

 

Fung's case caught the public eye by way of his being one of four protestors who, knowing that they were sought after by the police, had hidden in safehouses for two years ahead of a planned escape to Taiwan that was foiled when the quartet were arrested in Sai Kung in July of last year -- and one of that quartet being Tsang Chi-kin, the student who was shot by a police officer at point black range in Tsuen Wan on October 1st, 2019.  (Tsang, and the two others who were also in hiding, Ansen Wong and Alex Wong, will submit their pleas on September 28.  Tsang, Pang, Ansen Wong and Alex Wong have been on remand for over a year since their July 2022 arrests.)

I totally can remember where I was when I heard of Tsang Chi-kin having been shot.  Specifically, I was at the Foreign Correspondents' Club (on the invitation of a friend) when another friend (who's a member there) told me about it, told me to "be careful out there" and had explained that after news came of Tsang having been shot, his news company had asked him to get off the street.

 

Tsang's shooting is one of those shocking events on a long list of ones that I totally can remember where I was when I learnt about it.  And yes, the shocking events that involved planes flying into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- and the World Trade Center's twin towers' destruction -- on September 11th, 2001 are on that list.  And it's kind of shocking by itself to realise that 22 years have now passed since that day -- though it's also true enough that they also can feel like they occured in another lifetime; one that existed before such as September 28th, 2014, and June 12th, 2019.