Can't keep the worries away on the fifth day of Chinese New Year :(

 

That time of the year to spot these seasonal flowers

 

I hope to be able to see Chinese New Year flowers 

in Hong Kong next year too...

 

It's just the fifth day of Chinese New Year and I wish I could hold on to the holiday mood for a little while longer.  But although this festive period traditionally lasts for 15 days, there are too many reasons to not feel super cheery in Hong Kong once more.

 

To be sure, the lockdowns that were put on hold over the festive period have not resumed (at least not tonight).  Also, Hong Kong has now seen two consecutive days of single digit new Wuhan coronavirus cases (of 8 (two of which are imported) today and 9 (five of them imported) yesterday) -- and confirmation that a number of social distancing measures will be eased or lifted starting from Thursday.

 

But there are people who fear that this decision is premature; this especially since the recent low reported new numbers may be due in part to private clinics being closed during the first few days of the Lunar New Year and local people generally being reluctant to go see a doctor during this period, and there observably has been quite a bit of family and other get-togethers taking place over the holidays.  (With regards to the last: I definitely did see large groups out hiking together in the past few days and also could hear lots of people visiting the homes of some of my neighbors too.)

 

Other sources of worries for Hong Kongers include the distrusted healthcode tracing app (which many people in Hong Kong still have not downloaded or have bought new SIM cards and burner phones for), the rushed emergency approval of the Sinovac coronavirus vaccine (that saw Sinovac -- whose reported efficacy has been worryingly low -- being exempted from having to publish clinical data in medical journals) and -- yes, now we're getting to strictly political territory -- a proposed amendment to the Immigration Ordinance that would give “apparently unfettered power” to the immigration director to stop anyone from leaving Hong Kong.  

 

Oh, and the trial of nine of the fifteen pro-democracy figures arrested back in April last year (including now 82-year-old Martin Lee, Margaret Ng and Jimmy Lai) began today.  In the prelude to it, there was quite the hoo-ha over the appointment of a British QC -- so much so that David Perry eventually bowed to international outrage and changed his mind about taking the government's case.  But while there appeared to be less focus on who the presiding judge would be, the discovery today that it is Amanda Woodcock will surely have caused some worries since: her track record with regards to cases involving protestors (see examples here and here)  is not encouraging; and it also is worth noting that she is a designated National Security Judge.        

 

One wonders if the identity of the presiding judge played some factor in Au Nok-hin having chosen to pleaded guilty of the charges of organising and participating in an unauthorized assembly on August 18th, 2019, and Leung Yiu-chung opting to plead guilty to taking part in the protest that was supposed to take place in Victoria Park but spilled over into the streets because it attracted far more people (an estimated 1.7 million) than the stated venue had a capacity for (despite the weather that day being not at all ideal).  At the same time, it is worth noting that the other seven defendants indeed maintain their innocence; with Lee Cheuk-yan and "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung further making clear that they consider their prosecution to be political persecution since peaceful assembly should not be considered a crime.     

 

Adding to Hong Kongers' worries: the sense that the space for freedom of expression is shrinking fast. In her Al-Jazeera piece, journalist-educator Yuen Chan reported the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Lokman Tsui worrying "about the future of the free internet in Hong Kong. “The [National Security Law] has been used and abused offline to silence dissent,” he says, “and the fear is that the NSL will now be used to silence speech online too.”"

 

She goes on to state the following: "This would deal a serious blow to a city that has been watching its freedoms erode at a frightening pace. For Chris Yeung, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the free internet, freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary, are the “ultimate test” of Hong Kong’s survival as a city that is still recognisable as Hong Kong."  And left unsaid but very much in the air is the worry that, in the not too distant future, Hong Kong will indeed no longer be recognizably the city many of us know and have loved.  :(