Protests aplenty still taking place against the odds in Hong Kong

Cartoon of Junius Ho manipulating a police officer and 

an "I Love Hong Kong police" thug like puppets on a string

 

A Lennon Wall I saw in Tsim Sha Tsui last night

which I'm not sure is still around this evening

 

I haven't ventured out of my apartment building for even a single second today.  It's not because there's a typhoon visiting Hong Kong.  Neither is it due to my feeling physically unwell.  Rather, it's partly because I felt a need to have a quiet day indoors after having spent a good bit of time outside yesterday (for both work and leisure purposes), and also the result of my not wanting to come across any trouble by way of the odious Junius Ho having asked his supporters to "clean Hong Kong"  -- as in destroy the Lennon Walls that these days can be found in various parts of the territory, and whose existence are concrete proof of the wide support that the pro-democracy movement possesses. 

 

More than incidentally, today is the two month anniversary of the attacks by Triad thugs on passengers at Yuen Long MTR station.  And at the time of my writing this line of this blog post, hundreds have gathered in that northwestern New Territories town to mark the occasion with a sit-in protest that is taking place in a mall adjacent to Yuen Long MTR Station after the station was closed for the day earlier today by the MTR.

 

A few weeks ago, I would have seriously considered going and taking part in this protest and/or the march held in Tuen Mun earlier day which received a Letter of No Objection from the police.  That I didn't do so is not due to protester fatigue.  Rather, it's primarily because the MTR has continued the policy it initiated back on August 24th of closing MTR stations hours ahead of a legal protest march -- which makes it difficult for people, especially those not living in close proximity to the particular areas where the protests have been scheduled, to get to the events.  

 

To further inconvenience people -- and outright cause trouble -- the police have taken to, as we saw on September 8th, demanding that a legally approved protest march be prematurely halted hours before its scheduled end time, and set upon people soon after (or sometimes even before).  And sure enough, that's indeed what happened with this afternoon's protest march over in Tuen Mun, with multiple tear gas grenades and other types of weapons being unleashed by the police on people there for good measure.

 

Those who are observing events from afar might look at the participation figures for today's two protest events and conclude that the extradition bill/pro-democracy protests are dying down.  From my vantage point though, that's actually not the case: for even while the  individual protest events in recent weeks have not come close to being as numerically impressive as those took place back on June 9th, June 16th or even August 18th, the actual number of protests each week have actually proliferated.  

 

Something else quite noticeable to me is that there now regularly are a pretty wide choice of protests to take part in.  In addition to more conventional protest marches (both along established routes and newer ones) and rallies, there have been newer innovations such as gatherings in malls and other spaces to belt out the stirring, anthem-like Glory to Hong Kong.  Also adding to protest event variety and numbers have been the multiple human chains formed in the wake of the inspiring Hong Kong Way, including at the -- sadly under-reported, to my mind -- high-spirited football fan gathering in Victoria Park earlier this week!