More legal actions in West Kowloon and Admiralty, and an ambush lockdown in the Mid-Levels!

 

Photo and messages from late 2014

 

Photo and messages from December 2019

 

Twenty-one of the 47 democrats who have been charged under the national security law learnt yesterday that they will remain in custody after chief magistrate Victor So either denied bail for them once again or they withdrew their applications, presumably after deciding that he was not going to change his mind one week on after making the judgements that he did two Thursdays ago.  Lest we forget, those 21 democrats include the likes of former legislative councillors Claudia Mo and "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, former Civil Human Rights Front convenor Jimmy Sham and Umbrella Movement student leader Lester Shum -- people who would fit the bill of idealists who would have been allowed to flourish in a kinder, better Hong Kong. 

Another reminder: "Defendants who fail to secure bail could be held in custody for months awaiting trial. The national security law, which authorises a maximum punishment of life imprisonment, sets tougher conditions for bail than in regular criminal cases".

 

Today, attention shifted from the West Kowloon Magistrates Court in Sham Shui Po over to the High Court at Admiralty, where Madame Justice Esther Toh continued with her assessments of which of the 11 of the 47 granted bail by chief magistrate Victor So did indeed deserve to be let out of jail prior to the actual judgement being made as to whether or not they are guilty as charged.  On Thursday, the judge had ruled in favor of ex-legislative councillor Helena Wong (though not Yuen Long district councillor Ng Kin-wai) on Thursday  So I was hoping that she would her rule similarly with regards to Helena Wong's ex-legislative colleagues, Dr. Kwok Ka-ki and Jeremy Tam today.  

 

It thus was a shock that this was not the case.  And while it was a welcome surprise that the three others of the 47 who had bail hearings today, district councillors, Tat Cheng, Michael Pang and Ricky Or, had their bail terms accepted, I can't say that I'm super happy; this not least since, if the majority of the 47 are having problems getting out on bail, the signs are pointing to the majority -- if not all -- of them going to be found guilty of violating China's security law for Hong Kong despite all their having actually done having been to organize or take part in democratic primaries for an election that ended up being postponed and may well end up being cancelled altogether!   

 

Even before the trial of the 47 actually begins, it's already being described as "the court case that marked Hong Kong's fall".  At the same time though, there seems to be much less open discussion about it among many Hong Kongers than, say, the news involving the Hong Kong 12 -- and, even now, I see more "Save 12" signs than ones urging for the Democracy 47 to be freed.  I hope this is not a sign of people having become numb to political persecution in Hong Kong or even having downright given up.  I also hope that people won't only act when it's too late to save the Democracy 47 as well as others.

 

Because, sooner or later, those who think they won't be affected by the security law and political persecutions will be too.  Just like those people who thought they were too elite to get infected by the Wuhan coronavirus.  Exhibit A: the dance cluster responsible for starting Hong Kong's fourth wave.    Exhibit B: the gym cluster that either has given new life to the fourth wave or begun a fifth wave (Hong Kong reported 47 new coronavirus cases today; with the gym cluster now standing involving 99 infected people) -- and involves lots of people in the financial sector, whose children attend international schools, and who reside in places such as the Mid-Levels.

Earlier today, Hong Kong was treated to the unusual sight of a mobile testing center having been set up in Edinburgh Place and people who wouldn't consider themselves to be regular hoi polloi forming long lines there.  And this evening, an "ambush lockdown" is taking place -- not in, say, the lower income neighborhoods of Jordan, Yau Ma Tei and Sham Shui Po but the considerably higher income-level Mid-Levels!    

 

If truth be told, a good number of people are watching events this evening with a sense of schadenfreude as the residents of this area have tended to feel, and act, like they are removed from much of what goes on in other parts of Hong Kong.  Comments and observations on Twitter tonight include such as: "Citizen reporters Egg Egg Club joking that the government have listened to demands for lockdown ambushes in Mid-Levels to balance out those in low-income districts"!  

 

For the record, back in January, reactions to lockdowns in other parts of Hong Kong included such as "Remember the mid-levels lockdown when the tai-tais got Covid? No. Because that didn't happen."  It may have come two months late but, hey, it's finally happened!        

More political and pandemic woes for Hong Kong on the 10th anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake

 

Hong Kong's outlook is not as bright as we'd like --

and that's putting it mildly

 

We may have been silenced for now but we still remember

 

I woke up this morning mindful of today being the 10th anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake (and the terrible tsunami and disastrous nuclear disaster that followed in its wake).  And being the lover of Japan that I am, I had intended to write a post commemorating ten years having passed since that fateful day.  But I hadn't reckoned with this being another not good and, actually, pretty sad day for Hong Kong. 

 

To be sure, it began promisingly enough, with one of the 47 pro-democracy politicians and activists charged with under China's security law for Hong Kong two Sundays ago, former Democratic Party legistlative councillor, Helena Wong, being granted bail by high court judge Esther Toh against the objection of the Department of Justice.  But the same judge went on to deny bail to another member of the 47, Yuen Long district councillor Ng Kin-wai, a couple of hours later -- and based on this ruling, my sense is that few of the 11 others whose bail the Department of Justice has appealed against, never mind the 32 of the 47 that chief magistrate Victor So denied bail to are going to be allowed out of jail any time soon.  (This despite there being more bail hearing in the offing this Saturday and next Monday.)

 

Then, this afternoon, China's rubberstamp congress officially endorsed a proposal to drastically overhaul Hong Kong's electoral system and turn the legislative council into something akin to it.  And even though this was entirely expected (and the system has always been rigged against the democratic camp), it still leaves a bad taste in one's throat; this not least when one knows that Hong Kong-born and -bred representatives were among the members of the National People’s Congress (NPC) who gave their vote to this decision.

 

As one pro-Beijinger has admitted, this overhaul will drag Hong Kong back over two decades.  And as Apple Daily journalist Alex Lam succinctly spelled out in a Tweet: "The % of directly elected seats in #HK legislature started at 30% in 1991. The latest political axe by Beijing would erase all the efforts in democratization of the past 30 years, and in the worst scenario, directly elected seats will be left with a record low of 22%."    

 

Additional bad news comes over on the Wuhan coronavirus front.  More specifically, it's not just that the fourth wave hasn't completely died down in Hong Kong but also that the beginning of a fifth wave looks to have come into being -- in the form of a gym cluster whose tentacles reach into the expat community (as evidenced by a number of infected cases being linked with/breaking out in international schools and residing in the likes of Mid-Levels and Pok Fu Lam) and banking world  (with two banker friends of mine having confirmed that positive cases have emerged among their colleagues today).  

Adding to the alarm is a report that a fourth person has died in Hong Kong after receiving the Mainland Chinese produced Sinovac vaccine that is one of just two coronavirus vaccines approved for use in Hong Kong and one of just three types secured by the Hong Kong government thus far.  This news is going to add to the widespread vaccines scepticism among Hong Kongers, and so will reports that the Hong Kong government is set to release guidelines on various groups of people who should not take coronavirus vaccines (including smokers)!  (So even if they are merely guidelines rather than rulings, goodbye to herd immunity in Hong Kong anytime soon!) 

Trying to find the silver lining in the gray clouds over Hong Kong: at least there's no mask shortage in Hong Kong these days-- or, for that matter, shortage of toilet paper.  Speaking of which: remember the trio of robbers who decided to steal hundreds of toilet rolls back in February of last year?  They were sentenced today to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to robbing a supermarket of 600 rolls of toilet paper (worth a total of HK$1,695).  And in this case, I'm going to say that they deserve every day, minute and second of jail time that they were awarded!    

Down but not out in Hong Kong

 

Hong Kong's democracy dreams: underwater, 

overturned but still afloat?

 

One of many reminders out there of the people behind bars 

even though their trial is months from actually beginning

 

The High Court will resume its hearing of the Department of Justice's appeal against the bail granted to 11 of the 47 pro-democracy politicians and social activists arrested two Sundays ago in batches only this Thursday and Saturday.  In the interim, they -- along with the 32 denied bail by chief magistrate Victor So -- are being held in custody; with some of them (including Joshua Wong, who is already serving time for another "offence") held in solitary confinement, to add to the agony and injustice of it all.  

 

Writing about the 24-year-old political prisoner, Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, was moved to ask: "Is it vindictiveness or are the authorities so terrified that he'll spread his views to other prisoners?"  Another question that people would like an answer for -- this one more generally pertaining to the proceedings involving the 47 people charged: "given that indeed it's a foregone conclusion - the denial of bail as well as the complete dismantling of Hong Kong's rule of law - why are they bothering with the theatre of courts and trials? Is it for international image? Or a domestic audience? Why?"   

 

With regards to the latter query: the anwer in the minds of many people appear to be along the lines of inflicting a death by a thousand cuts to Hong Kong.  It's also been suggested that the authorities are doing this to maintain the veneer that the integrity of Hong Kong's legal system remains intact -- but if this is the case, they may well be fooling few people besides themselves and those too dimwitted to figure out what's really going on.  

 

At the very least, they're not fooling lawyers like Margaret Ng and, she's written, the defence lawyers in cases like that of the 47 who "could not recognize the place they were in and the procedure they had to follow" last week since "all the things in Hong Kong that we used to know have changed abruptly."  And neither are they able to fool international businessmen, including Yoshitaka Kitao, the chief executive of the company that runs Japan's largest online brokerage, who has gone public about his planning to pull his company's operations out of the southern Chinese city, arguing that "without freedom, there is no financial business".   

 

Kitao also specifically mentions China's security law for Hong Kong as a reason Hong Kong was now "not a good place for financial institutions".  And there is little doubt that the imposition of this law has drastically changed things, in the courtroom and the society at large.  

 

Veteran journalist Ching Cheong's recent piece on "The fall of Hong Kong: China's strategic plan to conquer Hong Kong and purge it of its people" contains the following description of how much destruction has already been wreaked in less than a year:-     

Since the implementation of the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law on July 1, 2020, the political situation in Hong Kong has deteriorated rapidly. The loose, liberal and pluralistic atmosphere that prevailed in Hong Kong before its return to China has almost disappeared. The inferior culture of the Chinese Communist Party, such as "snitching on someone," "voicing a political stand," "exposing and denouncing someone" and "swearing allegiance," which are common in mainland China, quickly swept all over Hong Kong.

Once a paradise for political refugees from the mainland, Hong Kong now produces political refugees of its own. Many social groups, in education, trade unions, social welfare institutions, the media and the judiciary, are beginning to feel the pressure of being "investigated." Radio Television Hong Kong's (RTHK) decision to follow the mainland's ban on BBC news programs indirectly announced the change of Hong Kong's previous "one country, two systems" into "one country, one system." Only 23 years after Hong Kong's "return" to a totalitarian regime, it has changed so much, with a lamentably speedy fall.

But if China has its way, you ain't seen nothing yet -- as Ching Cheong chillingly goes on to describe in quite some detail.  For those preferring a more succinct way to understand how much lower it all could go: consider that Freedom House gave Hong Kong a 52 point "partially free" rating this year, and China an abysmally low 9 point "not free" one!      

Still, there are people who are not accepting that this all is an inevitability and done deal.  And they include one of the people who had participated in the democratic primaries last July but was not among the 55 people arrested under the security law in January and 47 subsequently charged two Sundays ago, in no small part because he had already left Hong Kong.  

 

Former legislative councillor Ted Hui Chi-fung is in the news again today after it transpired that he's left Britain for Australia "in what he has described as a bid to expand international lobbying efforts on behalf of the city’s pro-democracy movement".  And, as before, he reiterated that he had not migrated even while having gone into exile.  In his own words: "[I]t’s not my determination to settle anywhere in the world because my only home is Hong Kong… as the spirit in the movement, so whenever Hongkongers are needed, I will be there."  

 

Reading about Ted Hui today brought to mind a couple of lines from Richard J. Bernstein's Why Read Hannah Arendt Now, which I read from cover to cover while waiting in line at the West Kowloon Magistrates Court last week: "We must resist the temptation to opt out of politics, to assume that nothing can be done in the face of all its current ugliness and corruption.  To do so is to allow ourselves to become complicit with the worst."

The bail hearings for the pro-democracy politicians and activists charged under the security law continues to run, and so does the emotional rollercoaster that much of Hong Kong is on!

 

Supporters outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court

for the bail hearing for the 47 people charged with

subversion under China's national security law for Hong Kong

 

Honestly now, why was there considered to be a need to

have so many police officers out there to police the crowd?!

 

The emotional rollercoaster Hong Kongers have been put on for the past week continues to run, with even seasoned journalists signalling that their need for some respite and at least one openly admitting to having  broken down and cried at the end of the marathon bail hearings for the 47 pro-democracy politicians and activists facing possible life in prison for having organized and/or participated in primary elections for the pro-democracy camp.  

 

Things took an unexpected turn yesterday afternoon when the Department of Justice decided to drop its appeal of bail for four of the 47, resulting in barrister Lawrence Lau, Wan Chai District Council chair Clarisse Yeung, AbouThai boss Mike Lam and social worker Hendrick Lui getting out on bail after all. But even while there was indeed some joy at this news, there was unhappiness that the 43 others remained behind bars.

 

Any chance that the 11 whose granting of bail is still being appealed by the Department of Justice would get out today disappeared after the judge hearing the appeals decided that she needed more time to consider the arguments presented by both sides before reaching her decision.  With these hearings adjourned until March 11th and 13th, that means that these folks will be spending at least half to one more week in jail.  

 

Adding further injury to the male members among them, it's been learnt that all of the men charged and not out on bail are due to be transferred to the maximum security Stanley Prison and placed in solitary confinement: all this before the actual trial -- which, given the prosecution having stated that they need three months to further investigate the alleged crimes, will take place only three months down the road, at minimum -- as well as decision as to whether they are guilty as charged!  At which point, it's worth bearing in mind, as lawyer Antony Dapiran pointed out in light of this disclosure: "According to the UN’s “Mandela Rules”, prolonged solitary confinement (more than 15 consecutive days) is regarded as a form of torture."

 

Amidst all this, it's easy to conclude that -- to quote a Reuters headline this week -- we're seeing the end of the road for Hong Kong's democratic dream.  This is especially so in view of what's happening over in far away Beijing -- and I don't just mean Tung Chee-wah's literal fall inside the Great Hall of the People on Friday, which conjured up memories of Margaret Thatcher's fall down that same building's steps back in 1982 and got people seeing bad portends for Hong Kong.    

 

Still, even while the news that Beijing is seeking to overhaul Hong Kong's electoral system seems to have captured international attention, I actually don't hear that much discussion and outcry about this here in Hong Kong.  Call us cynical but the system has been rigged for some time now.  

 

We're talking, after all, of the Chief Executive being selected rather than really elected.  Also, as it currently stands, only a little over half of the Legislative Council is directly elected by voters through one-person-one-vote, while 30 seats belong to the functional constituencies whose “voters” are not people but companies.  And this all before we get to talking about the vetting and disqualifications of political candidates which really has taken a life of its own in recent years.  

 

So, if anything, what's incredible is that "the Chinese government felt the need to change what was already an electoral system heavily rigged in favour of the pro-Beijing camp"!  But I guess it's also no more incredible that the international community still apparently is prone to be surprised by Beijing's antics and thus stuck at the "expressing condemnation and concern" stage of "appropriate" reaction (i.e., inaction) to what's going on in Hong Kong -- something that's been a continuation of what's been going on for years, if not decades, now.         

 

In summary: the feeling in Hong Kong has been that the legislative branch of the Hong Kong government has been marching in line with the executive branch of the Hong Kong government and Beijing for some time now; this particularly after the Legislative Council turned democrat-free last November with the mass resignation of members of the pan-democrat camp after the disqualification of four of their number.  Even as late as this week though, there are people still trying to have faith in the judiciary -- though, if truth be told, their actions of late don't exactly fill many of us with utmost confidence that they still can be and are truly independent. :(    

Yet another sad day in post-security law Hong Kong

 

An egg I was given out in West Kowloon today which got me 

thinking of Haruki Murakami's quote re the egg versus the wall*

 

"I really feel the urge to swear non-stop right now. #HongKong."  Thus Tweeted Hong Kong lawyer Kevin Yam earlier this evening.  I imagine many Hong Kongers share his feeling -- and know what caused them.

 

At the end of a marathon four day bail hearing for the 47 pro-democracy politicians and activists arrested back in January, and then charged and put behind bars on Sunday, which began on Monday morning, the presiding national security magistrate granted bail to 15 out of the 47.  But before they could get a taste of freedom this evening, the Department of Justice moved to have a review of the decision -- resulting in that 15 being remanded into custody once again along with the 31 defendants who were denied bail outright (including those already serving time, like Joshua Wong, and refused bail and thus in custody on other charges, like Wu Chi-wai and Benny Tai).    

 

As Timothy McLaughlin (author of the must-read "The Leader Who Killed Her City" piece on Carrie Lam) observed: "Everything about the past four days appears designed to inflict maximum punishment and break spirits. Monday’s hearing stretching into Tuesday, exhausted defendants needing hospital treatment, the instantaneous appeal, massive and aggressive police deployment. All of it."  

 

Frankly, even those of us who are just observers for the most part feel mentally and physically exhausted and drained by it all.  Whither the defendants (at least six of whom -- including Clarisse Yeung, Mike Lam, "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, Lester Shum and Owen Chow -- have needed to be hospitalized over the past 96 hours) and their family members (all of whom have been denied access to their loved ones since their being taken away from their homes)?  

 

Adding to the stress of it all, of course, is the fact that, as Amnesty International declared in a statement issued this evening: "These prosecutions are an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression and association in Hong Kong, [with] the four-day hearing in gruelling conditions cast[ing] grave doubts over the fairness of this trial from the start." 

 

The human rights organization also pointed out that: “None of [the accused] have committed a recognized crime, but they have fallen victim to a national security law that deems people a ‘threat’ simply for the peaceful expression of political views and for taking part in the conduct of public affairs"; and "[t]he denial of bail to the majority of defendants was essentially a forgone conclusion, despite the fact that all those charged should still be presumed innocent."  In other words: Not only are the people charged not guilty of any recognized crime, they are not being presumed innocent until proven guilty like it's long been accepted practice in Hong Kong.   

 

Even before today's court decision, American non-governmental organization (NGO) Freedom House decided to give Hong Kong its lowest score ever and deem it only "partially free" in its latest annual report.  Separately, American conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, booted Hong Kong off the index of economic freedom that it used to top after ascertaining that the economic policies are controlled from Beijing -- in other words, that "one country, two systems" is no longer in place.

 

The Hong Kong government can protest all the way about this (and they already have -- cf finance secretary Paul Chan's remarks here).  But the absence of the phrase "one country, two systems" along with "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong" and "high degree of autonomy" from a a report at China’s largest annual political session says so much more about those no longer being idea(l)s one can at least pretend to exist or even aspire to.  

 

And in a sign that worse is to come: A resolution on reforming Hong Kong’s electoral system has been placed on the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC) – confirming widespread reports of imminent changes to guarantee that only patriots be allowed in positions of power.  And while actual details are yet to have been released, we know this can only mean that Beijing will exercise further control and repression in Hong Kong in order to limit the chances of democracy blooming in this Special Administrative Region. 

 

Yet, amidst it all, like Haruki Murakami, I still find myself siding with the egg over the wall.  And if you don't know what I'm talking about, this is what the Japanese writer said in a speech back in 2009: 

If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us -- create who we are. It is we who created the system.

A rare -- and remarkable -- scene outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court today (Photo-essay)

The 47 pro-democracy politicians and activists charged with subversion yesterday under China's national security law for Hong Kong had a date in court -- specifically, the West Kowloon Magistrates' Court -- today.  Ahead of this happening, constitutional law expert Professor Michael Davis told RTHK’s Hong Kong Today programme that the charges brings Hong Kong into "huge disrepute" and doesn't benefit anyone.  And over the course of the day, something remarkable happened outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court.

 

More specifically, a crowd over 1,000 strong gathered to show their support for the people charged and facing life imprisonment for merely organizing or participating in a primary election.  In the words of one of them: "We know we cannot enter, but still we want to show our support...  Hong Kong people are so angry. No other protests can happen, so we come here. The new law forbids everything else."

 

At 8am, the crowd -- consisting of people who obeyed a call issued last night to wear black today -- was already sizeable.  And it still was so when I got there in the afternoon -- and stayed so until, at around 6pm, when the police came and removed the tape that was used to guide the queue of people officially waiting to get into the court and began hounding people to leave the area in front of the court complex.  For those seeking visual proof of the crowd size and such, here are some photos I took in the time that I was there:-

 

The lines of people stretched from inside the building 

to outside it and  around a corner hundreds 

of feet away from the building entrance...

 

...and they stayed put even as officers came over

to film and record the faces of those in the crowd

Loud cheers and chants (of "Hong Kong yan, ga yau"

and more) broke out after volunteers came around to 

give away free sandwiches and drinks to the waiting crowd

 

The chants and cheers got the police to whip out

their purple and blue warning flags

 

Banner bearing the names of political prisoners and 

political messages hoisted inside the West Kowloon 

Magistrates Court building by someone waiting in line within

 

"Grandma" Alexandra Wong with her signs outside

 

Another familiar face in the crowd, with his

"I want genuine universal suffrage" 

Umbrella Movement banner

 

I decided to call it at a day around 6.30pm, when the police started 

to clear people away from the area in earnest (and after hearing 

that the court would be in session late into the night) -- feeling better 

about Hong Kong than I did for much of yesterday and this morning

The destruction of Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp and dreams continues apace with the largest batch of security law arrests to date

  

Clarisse Yeung is among the 47 pro-democracy activists

charged with subversion under China's national security law

for Hong Kong today

 

So too is former radio show host turned lawmaker Ray Chan 

-- here pictured in happier times manning the People Power

stall at a Chinese New Year market

 

What I feared would happen today has indeed come to pass.  More specifically, a large number of pro-democracy politicians and activists have been charged under China's national security law for Hong Kong for their organisation and participation in a primary election for the now-postponed Legislative Council election, denied bail and thus jailed.  Sure, it's 47 of them rather than all 55 people arrested last month (but not charged until now) by the authorities.  But it still makes for the largest group of people arrested in one fell swoop for "subversion" under the Chinese security law: not only since the law came into effect in Hong Kong late on June 30th of last year but also since the offence of subversion was introduced into China's criminal law in 1997.         

Agence France-Presse (AFP)'s Xinqi Su outlined what this all means on a Twitter thread that includes the following points: "The blow is wide and heavy - [falling] not only those who signed a joint declaration of their intention to use every power a lawmaker has to push for democratisation in HK have been implicated. Among the 6 organisers, only [American citizen but long-time Hong Kong resident] John Clancey is not prosecuted"; "This case will again set [the national security law (NSL)] and Basic Law on a colliding track when the court is asked to decided whether election candidates making up their minds to veto government proposals with powers given by Basic Law is an offence under NSL": and "Last but not least they are not just names, numbers, nor “freedom fighters”" but, instead, human beings.

 

Also on Twitter can be found a thread about the arrestees -- 39 men and 8 women aged between 23 and 64 years -- that helps to personalize them and gives them a face.  And such is the small world that Hong Kong can be -- and it speaks too to the accessibility of Hong Kong's pro-democratic politicians and activists -- that I personally have interacted with a number of them, including Chu Hoi-dick and "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung.  Consequently, today's "development" really does feel like a personal blow. 

 

The sense of devastation is compounded by the fact that, to quote political commentator Antony Dapiran, Hong Kong "has just jailed almost the entire pro-democracy opposition. 47 people - the leading pro-democracy candidates preparing to contest [Legislative Council (LegCo)] elections last year - were today charged with subversion under the national security law, denied bail & jailed pending trial."  And when ones factors in that the veteran likes of Martin Lee, Margaret Ng and Lee Cheuk-yan currently being on trial and facing jail time too, you're talking about generations of pro-democratic opposition members and activists all being put out of action and physically separated from the vast majority of their fellow Hong Kongers. 

 

Returning to today's arrests: As historian Jeppe Mulich has noted, "The charge of conspiracy to commit subversion for organizing or participating in the democratic camp's primary election makes little sense. It's wild conjecture on the government's side, based primarily on an op-ed by Benny Tai. But will that make a difference?"  He follows up with this statement: "On its face the charge is absurd and... seems in contradiction with the [Basic Law (BL)]. But my faith in the [Hong Kong] judicial system is not at its high point right now."  Something which he is most definitely not alone about.

 

Something else that Professor Mulich Tweeted also resonates with me: "Two million Hongkongers took to the streets on 16 June, 2019 to demand gov't accountability. The pro-democracy camp won 17 out of 18 districts in November 2019 [and it only wasn't a clean sweep because the Islands District has unelected reprentatives]. 600,000 Hongkongers participated in the democratic primary in July 2020. Don't forget those numbers today."  This is not least because it gives a good insight into who are the legitimate representatives of the people and their will here in Hong Kong.   

 

While we're on the subject of numbers, let's consider those that form this date: 2:28.  Someone in the government (be it Hong Kong's or up in Beijing) has a dark sense of humor.  For today is "the 74th anniversary of Taiwan's 228 Massacre, which led to 38 years of martial rule on the island, or so-called the White Terror period."  It also is "the fifth anniversary of the [New Territories East] by-election that saw Alvin Yeung of the Civic Party beat the [pro-Beijng] DAB's Holden Chow, as well as the rise of Hong Kong Indigenous' Edward Leung. Leung is behind bars, Yeung is charged under [the national security law]" today.

 

Small wonder then that two days ago, "a prominent activist [disclosed that] he’s not afraid of being in prison; he’s afraid that when he comes out there’ll be no one there to greet him cos everyone’s either moved away or been silenced".  And still the world doesn't do much more than wring its collective arms and express its "concern" as what is happening to, and in, Hong Kong. :(