Joshua Wong was arrested again this afternoon. While it didn't come as a major surprise -- since with this famous thorn in the flesh of the Hong Kong government and also Mainland China's, it had seemed like just a matter of time before the authorities decided to arrest him once more -- it still was upsetting because, well, finding out about the arrests of people one likes and respects still does hurt, however many times it happens as well as seemingly inevitable (for some) it has become in contemporary Hong Kong.
One small consolation: Within hours of his arrest, the 23-year-old political activist was released on bail. Also, because his arrest is related to his having participated in an
unauthorised assembly against the mask ban last October 5, it's not a
security law arrest. Even so, he's looking at the possibility of being sentenced to six years in jail if convicted of these "crimes".
As the Financial Times' Eli Meixler was moved to Tweet (and yes, it's as bizarre as it sounds): "So just to be clear that I have this:@joshuawongcf arrested for wearing a mask in Oct, when it as illegal by emergency ordinance, before it became legal again in Nov, illegal in April, when they were also required outdoors, and compulsory in September"; with the only bit that he got wrong being that the wearing of masks both in outdoor and indoor spaces in Hong Kong became mandatory in July! Or as whitebison66 put it more succinctly: "he's arrested while it's illegal not to wear a mask for something that happened when it was illegal to wear a mask"!
Ironically, Joshua Wong's latest arrest comes just a few days after it was announced that his friend and fellow Hong Kong political activist, Nathan Law, had topped the 2020 TIME100 Reader Poll (the latest edition of TIME magazine's annual compilation of the world’s most influential people). Put another way: the world recognizes the contributions of the likes of Law, Wong and Agnes Chow, and respects their efforts to stand up for their city and its people -- even while the Hong Kong government and its overlords in Beijing look upon them as nothing but trouble and want to lock them up, probably for life, and silence them, possibly for eternity.
Which, for me, is all the more reason to listen to them while we can. And I think it says a lot about Joshua Wong that, upon his release on bail today, he was urging the international community to focus less on the more well known likes of him and more on such as the 12 young Hong Kongers detained in Shenzhen after unsuccessfully trying to flee to Taiwan last month. Also, his most recent Tweets at this time of writing are about a phone repair specialist unjustly arrested for possessing the phones of his clients who the police deemed to have broken the security law!
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