Another eventful day in a Hong Kong being too quickly destroyed by Beijing

Spotted on a storefront last week (but one of those posters 

had been removed before I passed by there again yesterday)

 

Also spotted in Hong Kong last week,

and hopefully still around this week
 

In his latest piece for EJ Insight, Michael Chugani listed some of the things that have happened in Hong Kong over the past year.  I've written about many of them at various points but to see them all mentioned in a single short article was quite breathtaking -- and showed how much Hong Kong has been transformed in just 12 months; enough for the veteran political commentator to conclude that "This time is for real: The Hong Kong we know is dying".    

 

To be sure, there were some victories in court for lovers of freedom in Hong Kong today and late yesterday.  Even then, as journalist-educator Yuen Chan, was moved to Tweet in the wake of what should have been unmitigated welcome news: "That sad feeling when instead of just applauding the court's ruling, you worry about what it portends for the future of the courts." <https://twitter.com/xinwenxiaojie/status/1329348865611411457>  And, as a matter of fact, there has been some not so positive news along with the positive ones over the course of what has been quite the news packed day.

 

To see what I mean, I'm hereby listing just some of what's been reported by Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) over the past 24 hours or so:-  

- The police have dropped the fine issued to a 12-year-old girl who had been out shopping for crayons with her brother when she was tackled by a riot police officer in September amid protests against the postponement of the Legco elections.  But as the blogger behind The Fragrant Harbour wrote, "Good luck getting an apology from [Police Commissioner Chris] Tang" for what the police put the girl and her family through!

- High Court judge Anderson Chow ruled earlier today that the existing mechanism to handle police complaints is in breach of the Bill of Rights on torture and cruel treatment.  He further ruled that the failure by the local constabulary to require riot police officers to display their identification numbers in the anti-extradition bill turned anti-government and pro-democracy protests violated the Bill of Rights governing torture and cruel treatment.  Upon hearing this, the Hong Kong Journalists Association has demanded that police officers start displaying their identification numbers immediately.  (But I think it'd be foolish for us to assume that the police are going to start complying with this legal ruling any time soon.)

 

- Today also happened to be graduation day at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).  Over the course of it, people wearing black graduation gowns and face masks marched on campus chanting anti-government protest slogans and holding up protest banners and flags. In response, university administrators reported their newly minted alumni to the police -- so much for academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus! -- and the police's national security department have launched an investigation into the protesters having displayed Hong Kong independence banners and chanted slogans calling for independence, and therefore being suspected of breaching the national security law!

 

 - According to more than one report, among the slogans chanted by the new CUHK graduates were “Save the 12,” referring to the 12 Hong Kongers who have been detained in Mainland China since their failed attempt to flee by boat to Taiwan this past August.  More than incidentally, more news came of that detained dozen today.  Specifically, seven of their families received letters from them hailing the conditions in the Shenzhen detention centre where they are being held as well their treatment by the Mainland Chinese authorities.  But even while the letters are recognizably in their relatives' handwritings, there is suspicion as to their content since, among other things, all the letters have similar content and "suspicious wording", including simplified Chinese characters and phrases not usually used by Hong Kongers.

 

-  And over on the international front, we have foreign ministers from the nations in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group (i.e., the USA, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) having issued a joint statement that China's imposition of new rules to disqualify elected legislators in Hong Kong appeared to be part of a campaign to silence critics and called on Beijing to reverse course. The Hong Kong government promptly responded by condemning the Five Eyes group's governments for making comments "irresponsible to the point of malice, [and] vivid proof of blatant interference in Hong Kong matters which are squarely internal affairs of the People's Republic of China."    

 

Quite a bit has already been written about those Legislative Council disqualifications (and the resulting resignations by the rest of the elected members of the pro-democracy camp), including on this blog.  Still, Holmes Chan' piece out this past Monday is worth bringing to attention, including by way of quoting the following passages:-   

For more than two decades, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers played a game rigged against them. On 11 November, they had finally had enough.

“We are facing a totally new paradigm,” said Wu Chi-wai, head of the Democratic Party and convenor of the opposition camp. “We choose to stand with our colleagues who were disqualified. We will collectively resign.”...

Wu paints the mass resignation by 15 democrats as a gesture of solidarity and protest. But it was also, undeniably, an admission of defeat. Hong Kong’s old-school opposition (known as the pan-democrats) has conceded that changing the system from within – a mindset ingrained since the city’s return to Chinese rule in 1997 – was no longer possible.

Finally, here's Michael Chugani with the last say in this post.  In the article I referenced at the beginning of it, he noted the following:-

Now that all opposition members have resigned, we have a [Legislative Council] with only pro-Beijing members who received far less votes than the opposition in 2016. This, in essence, means the legislature does not have a mandate from the people.

Yet they will rubber-stamp laws such as allowing loyalist Hongkongers in the Greater Bay Area to vote even though our election laws state only those ordinarily resident in Hong Kong can vote. Their aim is to create a new voter base which supports them.

It is heartbreaking to watch these supine surrogates obediently knife Hong Kong’s soul. They are Hongkongers too. Why are they so willing to change the DNA of their own home? Do they really believe in their hearts that killing off the opposition, dismantling the city’s core values, and making the judicial system more compliant is good for Hong Kong?

As I have said before, Hong Kong will not die in the way Fortune Magazine predicted. It will remain a thriving city. What will die is the Hong Kong we know.