Yet another bad news Wednesday for Hong Kong

 

Sign seen at a protest last December

 

Sun setting on Hong Kong

 

I'm beginning to really hate Wednesdays.  Last Wednesday saw Carrie Lam delivering a Policy Address that looked to signal the destruction of the Hong Kong many of us love.  The Wednesday before saw another round of arrests that include of now former legislative councillors Ted Hui, Ray Chan and Eddie Chu Hoi-dick.  And the Wednesday before saw that Beijing going ahead and disqualifying four Hong Kong legislative councillors (including the aforementioned Ted Hui), a move that led to the remaining members of the pan-democrat camp in the Legislative Council submitting their resignations enmasse.  

 

This Wednesday began with the arrest again of Hong Kong Baptist University student union president Keith Fong for carrying "offensive weapons", as the police deemed the star-gazing laser pointers he was found to possess in Sham Shui Po last August.  This time around, it was deemed necessary for 20 police officers to go and arrest him at his home.  (Note that he was previously released unconditionally and, again, after being found with another person's wallet on him.)

 

Then, in the afternoon, came the sentencing of Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam after they pleaded guilty two Mondays ago of having instigated, incited and taken part in a non-violent protest against police brutality on June 21st, 2019.  Despite their "crime(s)" being on the questionable side, they were pretty harshly penalized: with Joshua Wong being sentenced to 13.5 months behind bars, Agnes Chow to 10 months imprisonment and Ivan Lam to seven months of the same.  And while some people sneered at Agnes Chow having broken down and cried upon hearing her sentence, how many wouldn't if this was what they got despite this being their first "offence", one day before their 24th birthday?

 

One of the great ironies with regards to all of this is that back on June 21st, 2019, it became pretty clear that Joshua Wong and his cohort were not the leaders of the ongoing protests.  As more than one person (including Antony Dapiran, in a Tweet today) has pointed out: "Contrary to the court’s account of events of 2019.6.21, it was striking just how irrelevant Wong & the other “leaders” were to the crowd protesting outside police HQ. The crowd basically ignored them & coordinated their leaderless protest via their phones."

 

Still, the fact remains that, as Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen recognizes, "These brave young people are symbols of freedom & democracy in #HongKong".  Also, as history professor Jeppe Mulich noted: "It doesn't matter that the three people jailed today played little role in 2019. The bosses demand heads on spikes, even if they belong to the generals of the last war."

 

And should anyone have thought that the powers that be were done (for the day) after putting 24-year-old Joshua Wong, 23-year-old (until tomorrow) Agnes Chow and 26-year-old Ivan Lam behind bars today, news came late this evening of Next Digital's Jimmy Lai and two of his senior company executives (Royston Chow and Wong Wai-keung) having been charged with fraud and detained at least until they appear in court tomorrow.  To quote another Tweet from Jeppe Mulich: "Many of HK's public opposition figures seem likely to spend 2021 in jail. Most of them had limited influence on last year's leaderless movement, but Beijing is using this moment to settle scores. The space for public dissent is closing: In LegCo, in print, and in the streets."

 

Also due in court tomorrow is People Power's Tam Tak-chi, who's been held without bail since September 8th.  A judge specially tasked with handling national security cases is to hold a hearing to decide whether to take on his sedition trial, even though the pro-democracy activist has not been charged under the new legislation.  In short: It sounds like a lot of poppycock intended to keep him behind bars for longer than necessary to me.  

 

And amidst it all, spare a thought for what happend at iCable yesterday.  And truly, it's not every day that 40 members of a newsroom are given the sack, with all department heads and another 16 journalists also resigning in protest. 

 

With each passing day, Hong Kong's future becomes clearer -- and it really is a prety scary sight.  We're talking of a Hong Kong with "a legislature devoid of opposition, a population cowed by national security legislation and a tone-deaf chief executive operating in a made-in-China protective bubble".  And it is all the more painful when we know that, as Kent Ewing wrote:

Hong Kong’s future could have been very different. But instead this government, taking its marching orders from the north, has put the best and brightest members of our younger generation — Joshua Wong Chi-fung, 24, Ivan Lam Long-yin, 26, and Agnes Chow Ting, 23, to name a prominent threesome — behind bars.  

It’s troubling, to say the least, to live in a city where people who symbolise a better future languish in jail.