Assorted musings on Human Rights Day 2020

Against the odds, things sometimes can look and feel

pretty normal still in Hong Kong

 

The fact of the matter is that, amidst it all, 

life still is going on...

 

In what can seem like another lifetime, I used to think that the front page news in Hong Kong often resembled that of a small town; this especially because there was so little violent crime (that single females felt completely safe being out and about after dark as well as in broad daylight, in alleys as well as on main thoroughfares) but, also, the political shennanigans that took place didn't seem to have such big effects on the territory (or be deemed all that (internationally) newsworthy).

 

Especially since last year, however, that is no longer the case.  Gone are the days when wild boar excursions would be the major talk of the town (even while they still definitely do venture out of their natural habitat to pay visits to the heart of the city!).  Heck, even the Wuhan coronavirus has been pushed out of the limelight by certain actions on the part of the Hong Kong police, judiciary or Carrie Lam this year.

This is not to say though the pandemic is not a concern of Hong Kongers.  Today saw yet another triple digit day of new daily cases: 112, to be precise; with the much-derided dancing and singing cluster up to 702 in the number of infected individuals that are part of it.  In addition, today saw the coming into effect of the latest round of social distancing restrictions which have upset many people, not least because they often seem less logical than geared towards penalizing businesses and regular folks as well as stamping out protests.

Compared to previous days (including the first two of this week and a good number last week), the past two have been relatively free of political upsets.  But it's really a measure of how much Hong Kong has changed -- and worse its political situation has become -- in recent months that it's not earth-shatteringly unexpected now for political activist Agnes Chow -- who, remember, had zero convictions before last week -- to get denied bail again (as happened yesterday), this time ahead of the hearing of her appeal against her 10 month jail term for her involvement in an anti-police brutality protest back in June 2019.  

The past couple of days also have seen Hong Kongers take time to pause for breath and do such as look back and question why Agnes Chow's compatriot, Joshua Wong, was singled out for the treatment meted out to him at Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre prior to his actual conviction.  Sadly, however, we know that the worst is not yet over because, also in recent days, there have been rumblings of the Hong Kong government doing such as examining “loopholes” in the city’s laws against the spread of "misinformation".  

 

Actually, the fact of the matter is that the threat to Hong Kong will remain as long as China feels free to go about doing the things it's been doing for some years now.  Like enslaving a good number of its own people.  (Pretty ironic for a country whose national anthem tells folks to "Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves", right?)    

 

Looking across the still existing Hong Kong-Mainland Chinese border: Ahead of Human Rights Day (i.e., today), Mainland Chinese human rights lawyers and their families were prevented from venturing out of their homes.  There also has been disturbing news about a citizen journalist who reported about the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and has since been detained for over six months now in a Shanghai facility.  More specifically, while staging a hunger strike, she has had a feeding tube forcibly inserted and her arms restrained to stop her pulling it out.  Truly, as was stated in The Guardian piece reporting this: "The Chinese government’s crackdown on activists, dissidents, and human rights works appears to have worsened this year."  

 

At the same time, it's not like they have not been acting badly for years now.  After all, it's ten years to the day that Liu Xiaobo was not able to be present at the ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize that he was awarded.  With his wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest in addition to his being in prison at the time, Liu Xiaobo's prize was placed on an empty chair in Oslo's city hall -- for the first time since 1936, when the German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was stopped by Nazi authorities from travelling to the Norwegian city.

 

Seven years later, Liu Xiaobo died while under guard at a hospital in north-east China, making him the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in custody since von Ossietzky died in a Nazi concentration camp.  Back on July 13th, 2017, I didn't imagine that just a few years later, Hong Kong would have political prisoners of its own.  Touch wood that they will stay well and emerge out of prison to glory a la Nelson Mandela -- though pretty please don't let any of them have to spend even one tenth of the amount of the time (27 years!) behind bars that he did!