How can there genuinely be peace in Hong Kong
when this continues to go on? :(
Earlier this month, the analyst known as comparativist (aka dr. trey) wrote about Hong Kong having been "quiet" lately. And if I'm not mistaken, there's "only" been two days of tear gas this December (specifically the 1st and, two Sundays later, the 15th) compared to what seem more like daily tear gas buffets not so long ago.
Still, it's not like the Hong Kong government has stopped persecuting and prosecuting people, including six people who gathered in a public park to practice parkour and nine teachers whose alleged wrongdoings involve social media posts. And while they are not (yet) among the eighty educators arrested since June, yesterday came the news that the police had arrested four members of Spark Alliance, a crowdfunding platform in support of pro-democracy protestors in need, for money laundering. As Apple Daily reporter Alex Lam noted at the beginning of his series of Tweets on this matter: "This government has no intention to de-escalate[, does] it?"
Another prominent political analyst/commentator in Hong Kong's Twitterverse, Kong Tsung-gan, has pointed out that: "The fundamental question is: is there any real crime here or are the police cracking down on the movement & on our ability to aid the thousands of arrested protesters? Of course, the police don't have a reputation as a neutral player where the protests are concerned."
The following comment also is a part of that Spark Alliance arrests comments thread: "Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scuttlebutt among protesters is the police are engaged in a frame job, probably don't have the expertise or evidence to press the case & are mainly doing this to smear, intimidate & make people worried about donating to orgs that help protesters." Put another way: Talk about being Asia's finest no more -- people are no longer putting it past the Hong Kong police to deceive as well as be able to uphold the law.
Even while there is great dislike and distrust of the Hong Kong police though, it's worth bearing that the rest of the government isn't held in high esteem either; with Carrie Lam's popularity ratings keeping on hitting historic lows and more than half of the respondents to a recent survey saying they were dissatisfied with how the rule of law is being implemented in Hong Kong in recent months. So I think it's both deluded and provocative of Executive Councillor Bernard Chan to publically suggest, as he did today, that the worst of Hong Kong's protests is probably over.
As it stands, the Spark Alliance arrests -- and the seizure of up to HK$70 million (~US$9 million) of donations intended to help protestors-- may, spark, more intense protests once more. Already, the Spark Alliance arrests were a focus of today's lunch protests in Central and Taikoo, and evening protests in the likes of Kowloon Bay. Also this evening, thousands of people gathered outside Lai Chi Kok detention centre to show solidarity with the 80 or so pro-democracy protestors currently remanded there, demand their release and denounce the crackdown on Spark Alliance.
In addition, something's been going on up in Tai Po tonight. There's talk of an attempted armed robbery turning into a confrontation between residents and police and a live round appearing to have been fired -- though it's not clear by whom. What's not in dispute though is that, at some point, the riot police showed up and the inevitable tear gassing took place -- making it so that there now have been three days of tear gas this month, with eleven more to go before 2020 comes along (and minus the usual New Year's Eve fireworks this time around).
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