Hong Kong humor can be on the dark side these days,
like much of Hong Kong :S
Hong Kong's ex-police chief Chief Executive John Lee wrapped up a four day trip to Mainland China at the beginning of this week. Barely 48 hours later, we see the kind of "developments" that we used to associate with Mainland China rather than Hong Kong.
Labor activist (and former chairperson of defunct pro-democracy coalition, the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU)) Joe Wong "disappeared" this morning. A few hours later, fellow former HKCTU member, Denny To, released a statement on Facebook announcing that Wong had “regained his freedom” and that the Labour Day march the two had been planning will be cancelled.
These statements prompted people to conclude that Joe Wong had been taken into custody this morning by the police, then released. And To's claim that "Wong had not been arrested, but had experienced an “emotional meltdown” and was under tremendous pressure" only adds fuel to, rather than dispell, many people's suspicions that Joe Wong had been "invited to tea" by folks he would not want to be near, let alone socialise with, and subjected to police interrogation.
As per a Hong Kong Free Press report this afternoon on the matter: "The police confirmed on Wednesday [i.e., today] that they had received the
cancellation of the request for a Labour Day march. A police
spokesperson warned that anyone who gathered unlawfully on Hong Kong
Island on May 1 could be charged with participating in an illegal
assembly, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison."
"To added that they had expected this development when applying for
approval to hold the march. “This is not a coincidence,” the labour
rights activist said. He expressed hope that Hongkongers would uphold
their beliefs despite any hardships encountered at the moment."
Curiouser and curiouser? Not really, if one has been following how the Hong Kong authorities now operate. The Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor Tweeted on the chain of events leading to what's transpired today:
Wong and To posted on Facebook that at the April 21st meeting with the police, the police had asked many questions and about a number of hypothetical scenarios. For example, "what the organisers would do if the total number of participants
exceeded estimations, and how they would handle “people with different
views, including how to avoid violent groups from hijacking the march”".
In addition, the "police showed the organisers comments left on
their Facebook post about the planned march and asked them whether they
knew who had left them, the post read. One of the comments were “even
though [we] are in the UK, we still support everyone. Add oil.”" Comments that most people would seem as innocuous but aroused the police's suspicions -- or that they decided they could use as an excuse to get the organisers to withdraw their march application.
A reminder from human and labor rights activist Johnson Yeung: "legally one doesn't need to 'apply' for protest; instead they *notify* the police abt the protest. Police could *object* the notification based on some narrow criteria e.g. public safety. Post COVID there is no good reason to object, so they made organisers... withdraw."
With that last sentence in mind, consider the following statement posted on Facebook from Denny To: Joe Wong "told me that he had just signed a paper to cancel the march, but could not disclose the details due to Article 63 of the Hong Kong National Security Law. I can imagine what happened during that time because of my past experience." (A link to Article 63 here.) And the statement from Security Secretary, Chris Tang, who -- as is so happens -- is currently in Beijing, that "I think first of all for the reasons of the withdrawal I think probably you'll have to ask the individual organiser for the reasons."
As Hong Kong political observer Renauld Haccart Tweeted: "Tang is being dishonest here. It’s fairly clear from the sequence of events that [Joe] Wong has met with the police, and what he heard left him no choice but to cancel. And he has been told that what he heard had to with National Security and saying anything would fall under the NSL" (i.e., National Security Law).
"Another observation: at no point in all of this is the police trying to help honest citizen exercise their rights to protest.
What they’re doing though is having conversations away from public scrutiny which always end up in organizers abandoning their plans. Time and again." So, yeah, dark days in Hong Kong indeed; so dark that so much gets obscured from regular folks -- though, I must say, it often can feel like some of us have grown pretty adept at making out what is happening in the dark and reading the tea leaves.:S
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