At Edinburgh Place this afternoon, rain be damned!
A long banner temporarily installed at Edinburgh Place
with key protest dates and messages from protestors on it
A sample selection of protest messages and art
Edinburgh Place has been a favorite place for protest rallies in recent months.
Adjacent to Victoria Harbour and easy to get to via various forms of
public transportation, it also can accomodate more people than nearby Chater Garden, which also has seen its share of protest rallies taking place there.
Last Sunday saw me at that open space for the Solidarity with the Uyghurs rally and, despite the trouble that broke out there that caused the rally to be prematurely halted, I was back there the next day for a rally in support of the Spark Alliance. And I was back at Edinburgh Place once more this afternoon for a rally to encourage pro-democracy protestors to keep on going into and in 2020 which, despite taking place in rainy weather and during the holiday season, attracted a respectable crowd.
I
know there are people who want the protests -- or, at least, the unrest
-- in Hong Kong to end sooner rather than later. I too would like to
see genuine peace return to the territory along with no more protestor arrests (which already number around the 6,500 mark) being made and the chances of encountering tear gas when doing such as walking towards the Star Ferry after dinner with a friend return to zero.
Come to think of it, I also wish I didn't feel obliged to minimize my usage of the MTR and boycott "blue" establishments like Senryo (once my favorite sushi chain), Shake Shack and Yoshinoya.
In addition, it'd be nice to be able to have full confidence again that
performing arts events that I want to go to will not get cancelled due
to such as their featured performers deciding against visiting Hong Kong or that I could go to a favorite bar in an area like Lan Kwai Fong on Halloween. Heck, I really do wish that I could feel okay when catching sight of the police in Hong Kong, safe in the knowledge that they are there to protect people than me rather than than threaten my safety.
The thing though is that Hong Kong can't return to what it was -- and that might not be a completely bad thing since, as one message on a wall had it, "normality was the problem". Put another way: all kinds of things were being effected to try the tolerance of Hong Kongers and get the majority of Hong Kongers to hit a point where it was collectively decided that resistance was necessary, otherwise we would go on the path of no return as far as China-ification was concerned -- or, worse, have Hong Kong be turned into another Xinjiang.
All in all, there are times when I'm amazed it took so many people in Hong Kong so long to get fired up -- about the proposed extradition bill but also genuine universal suffrage for Hong Kong. But now that people are, it's going to take a hell of a lot to stop people fighting to see that all five protestor demands are met rather than just the one.
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