Hong Kong braces itself as the USA as well as China act on Hong Kong

Hordes of riot police in Causeway Bay yesterday afternoon

Crazy amounts of riot police out detaining people

in Admiralty that same afternoon

"You can't kill us all" but it can seem like they

want to arrest everyone instead :(

Hong Kong once again had zero new Wuhan coronavirus cases today, making it 12 days since there was a locally transmited case in the territory.  But while the government also has announced that more entertainment venues will be able to reopen next week, its ban on large public gatherings -- including the annual June 4th candlelight vigil in Victoria Park -- will remain in place.  

Even while plans already are being made to commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre in a different way from how it's been for the past 30 years in Hong Kong, the chances are high that this June 4th will also be filled with other protests here in the Big Lychee thanks to the controversial national anthem bill -- which resumed its second reading begin yesterday, only to have the debate on it be temporarily halted today -- being due to be passed on that very day.  Put another way: the chances are very high indeed that Hong Kong will have its own tragedy to mourn that day along with a Chinese one. 

This past year, there's been so many sad days for Hong Kong already.  June 12th.  July 21st.  August 31st.  The list goes on and on and on.  And some people might add yesterday and today to it.  With regards to the former: the anticipated major protests actually didn't occur for the most part.  Even so, pepper balls were fired by the riot police in Central at lunch time and some 360 people (a good number of whom were schoolchildren along with other youngsters) were arrested by the police in premptive moves that came approximated arrests for "thought crimes" and doing away with presuming people are innocent until proven guilty. 

To be sure, there were standoffs between protestors and the police late into the night in Mongkok.  But many (most?) of the arrests and the Central pepper ball attack took place hours prior to it; when it seemed like, as a result of the calls to strike and go out into the streets having been made at the last minute (after it was realized that the area around the government complex had become well nigh impossible for regular folks to enter), the majority of Hong Kong elected to end up going about the day pretty much as normal -- with maybe more "yellow" shops staying open for business than ones who decided to close to show solidarity with anticipated strike action by others.

Granted that on my afternoon stroll through Hong Kong's urban areas yesterday, I did witness pockets of protests.  At Admiralty, I also saw a long line of stopped trams -- not able to proceed further west due to what was happening over in Central.  On the other hand, I found Harcourt Road and the shopping mall closest to it to be far more deserted and less full of people than Pacific Place (everyone of whose shops was open for business along with its cineplex) further away from the Legislative Council building.

All in all, yesterday felt nothing like this past Sunday.  Indeed, I'd go so far as to suggest that it all felt like a rehearsal of sorts for a later day, or a day to experiment to see what worked and what didn't -- on the side of both the protestors and also the police (with the latter opting to show how much of a paranoid police state Hong Kong has become, probably without much thought of how unsustainable their actions actually are, and what consequences they will almost inevitably engender).

As it happened, the day's major development actually took place late at night and came courtesy of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  In a succinct Tweet, he dropped quite the bombshell.  Hours later, as much of Hong Kong slept, he embellished on his announcement to assert that: “No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground”; and “While the United States once hoped that free and prosperous Hong Kong would provide a model for authoritarian China, it is now clear that China is modeling Hong Kong after itself”.  As such, the United States of America would no longer maintain special trade relations with Hong Kong or consider it an autonomous region, as it has done since the 1997 handover by the United Kingdom to China.

It remains to be seen what exactly the US government is going to do after this announcement.  Among the possibilities are sanctions, the cancellation of bilateral treaties, the imposition of tariffs on goods coming into, out and through Hong Kong, and export controls.  But even while most people acknowledge that Hong Kong will inevitably be dealt more economic blows as a result of this (which already have been felt at the stock exchange), there is a sense that it will be worth of it if it means that the Chinese Communist regime is made to pay for its destruction of "one country, two systems" and Hong Kong itself.  And of course its Hong Kong quislings deserve to be penalized too.

Something else that remains to be seen are the specifics of the highly unpopular (among Hong Kongers) national security law that China's rubberstamp congress approved this afternoon -- with one dissenting vote and six abstentions.  But while it's headline news in Hong Kong as well as beyond, the fact of the matter is that pretty much everyone knew the bill would be made law once it was announced last Thursday; hence my feeling far more devastated on Thursday night and a good part of Friday than I actually do today.    

It can seem like scant consolation at this point but it's worth noting that this national security law hasn't come into effect yet.  (As Antony Dapiran pointed out, the law hasn't actually been drafted yet -- and that's estimated to take another couple of months.)  And even while enquiries about, and actual purchases of, VPNs have surged in Hong Kong in recent days, like Goofrider, I don't plan on censoring myself -- at least not just yet -- without knowing the specifics.  Why give the oppressors the satisfaction of handing my right to free speech over on a silver platter?  

Also, for the record, the Basic Law still officially remains in force in Hong Kong, and Article 28 of it goes as follows:

The freedom of the person of Hong Kong residents shall be inviolable. No Hong Kong resident shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful arrest, detention or imprisonment. Arbitrary or unlawful search of the body of any resident or deprivation or restriction of the freedom of the person shall be prohibited. Torture of any resident or arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of the life of any resident shall be prohibited.