This evening, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) broke the news that the Hong Kong government has delayed the passage of another contentious bill on top of their decision to suspend -- though not withdraw -- the much feared and hated extradition bill that brought millions of people out to the streets in protest last Sunday. In a sign that the government has woken up to the fact that the people aren't exactly singing to their tune, the
second reading of the national anthem bill, which seeks to imprison
and/or fine the sum of up to HK$50,000 those who are adjudged to misuse
or insult the March of the Volunteers, has now been delayed to at least after the Legislative Council's summer recess this year.
Earlier today, RTHK also put out a news report about pro-Beijing lawmaker Alice Mak having handed out a profanity-laced scolding to Carrie Lam on Saturday,
after the Chief Executive informed pro-government lawmakers of the plan
to suspend the extradition bill. It may be a public broadcasting
service owned by the government of Hong Kong but RTHK sure is showing that it's not necessarily going to play the tunes sought by its paymaster; with stories of many of its staffers
being pretty irate at recent government actions in Hong Kong, especially
after one of its own was hit by a tear gas round fired by the police at the
veritable war zone that the brutes in police uniform turned Admiralty
-- and parts of Wan Chai and Central too -- into last Wednesday.
Other articles out on the RTHK website today include reportage of local
religious leaders (including Cardinal John Tong, whose flock nominally
includes the avowedly Catholic Carrie Lam) calling for the explicit
withdrawal of the extradition bill and an official inquiry into the
police action on Wednesday that resulted in injuries, some of them
severe, sustained by close to 80 people. Continuing on a religious note: another RTHK article -- also out this same day! -- tells of a
Hong Kong resident seeking the High Court's help in getting a policeman
to apologize after he told a Christian pastor during a protest outside
the Legislative Council building on June 12th to "ask your Jesus to come
to see me"!
Perhaps that policeman had gone mad after hearing Hallelujah to the Lord sung too often at him by anti-extradition bill protesters. For much more than Do You Hear the People Sing? or any of the other songs associated with the 2014 Occupy movement (such as Beyond's Under a Vast Sky), that 1974 hymn has become the anthem of the current Hong Kong protests (for an actually good legal -- rather than just religious -- reason, actually)!
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