A UK parliamentary group criticizes the Hong Kong Police for breaking international conventions in their treatment of volunteer medics at protests. The government denies it and goes into predictable whiny petulant foot-stamping mode.
(If you like that official statement, you’ll love this little one lashing at social media posts ‘creating issues’ with fake news. The Hong Kong government has for years, of course, assiduously avoided ever ‘creating issues’, let alone spouting falsehoods.)
Presumably with a view to solving ‘issues’, the authorities pile heaps of petty charges arising from the June 4 vigil onto every activist they can think of. (RTHK report.) The alleged offenses have nothing to do with the NatSec Law, but the round-up is certainly in the same spirit and intended to add to the overall ambiance: no-one is safe, and the cops will spare no effort in dredging up the flimsiest reasons to arrest and intimidate.
With big names like Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai involved, this will attract more international attention. In its obsession with keeping itself safe from the Dreaded Hong Kong Teenager Threat to the Nation, the CCP encourages such measures as Magnitsky Act sanctions or visits by Western cabinet members to Taiwan. It’s all linked. I know some people find Joshua Wong slightly annoying, but he does seem to realize this – and is prepared to be put in jail as part of the process.
If I had to make a prediction, I would say the next big (2019-style) street protests will be provoked by the imprisonment of pro-dem grandees including Martin Lee or Margaret Ng on idiotic ‘subverting the state’ charges – if Beijing is dumb enough to order it.
In Mekong Review, Kong Tsung-gan offers a full analysis of Hong Kong’s new regime…
…the edict is not a law in any normal sense of the word. Nor does it have anything to do with national security, again in any normal sense of the word. It is entirely a misnomer. It is an imperial edict imposed by the rulers of China upon their colonial subjects…
As mentioned above…
…the edict and the already ongoing crackdown on the freedom struggle intertwine.
Some more interesting reading…
Nikkei Asian Review finds evidence to suggest that China’s Chairman-for-Life Xi Jinping may really mean it – and stay in power through to 2035. (At least, I would say. Nothing more pathetic than someone who has to go around introducing himself as ‘former Chairman-for-Life’.)
Not news, but Hollywood is self-censoring to please China. ‘Appeasement means profits’.
And (after U of Queensland, if you’re following these things) another Australian university becomes an arm of the CCP’s United Front. Obviously, this comes down to money, but it’s fascinating to see how personally invested some university officers have become in the big win-win Panda-suck friendship thing. Eeewwww… this is humiliating.
New Statesman explains (slowly, using easy words) to leftists why they should oppose China’s human rights horrors even if it means taking the same side as the evil imperialist West.
Plucky little Romania produces a precisely crafted list of conditions for 5G equipment suppliers, almost as if they had someone in mind…
…companies controlled by a foreign government, that don’t have a transparent ownership structure, have a history of unethical corporate behaviour or are not subjected to an independent justice system in their home country, are not eligible.
(As a teenage pioneer-explorer in the late 70s, I hitch-hiked through Romania en route to Istanbul. The greatest impression the semi-medieval country made on me was empty shops and a massively bloated, near-to-bursting, dead horse in a ditch with its legs sticking in the air. Until now.)
Fascinating background to a new book about Jewish refugees in WW2 Macau. (Includes a reference to this place – if I ever heard of it, I’d forgotten. That site is a snare. Next thing, I’m engrossed in this…
The execution chamber was considered unique in Asia in that it carried out death by hanging, with the body dropping through a trapdoor directly into the prison hospital’s morgue.
I am trying to imagine Hemlock as a ‘Little Pioneer’ with a red hankie wrapped around his neck.
Why is it the Little Red Book waving, love-the-motherland (CCP) Chinese students in Oz feel so much more emboldened to acting like little Brownshirts than, say, Chinese students in the US? Is it because Americans just simply wouldn’t tolerate that kind of shit as easily and the gun owning, pickup truck driving culture instills a bit of good old fear into the little commies?
In all seriousness, I wonder what the deal is??
You can read more about Tilanqiao Prison (formerly Ward Road Gaol) in Paul French’s superb book City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai.
I think the problem with Australian universities is similar to the problem HK had with mainland tourists. They have got themselves so dependent on income from Chinese students that saying boo to the goose will halt the flow of golden eggs.
In other matters, maybe the Catholic diocese has a case of twisted knickers.
“Policies and regulations within schools should prevent campuses from politicisation and should bar people from using premises for the unilateral promotion of political messages, positions or views.”
So, how does that square with this, especially “correct values on national identity”?
“The Hong Kong Catholic diocese has asked its schools to enhance students’ awareness of new security legislation, the anthem law and cultivate “correct values” on national identity.”
From HKFP: https://hongkongfp.com/2020/08/07/hong-kong-catholic-diocese-urges-schools-to-promote-national-security-education/
“I know some people find Joshua Wong slightly annoying”
Slightly? Slightly? He drives me bloody mad.
Fact is, he’s too stoopid to say anything without reading off his I-Phone what some guru has concocted for him to voice.
Actually, I’d use him as justification for extending the abortion time limit for babies up to the age of 25 years.
@ Where’s my jet plane
The catholic diocese have clearly kissed the ring
@max noodle – @where’s my jet plane
Wonder if the National Insecurity Law applies to the confessional?
@Max Noddle
Coincidentally, the Vatican was reportedly a target of a sophisticated, state-level hacker suspected to be China just last month.
Also by coincidence, the Vatican dropped a key part of one of the Pope’s recent speeches, which criticized the CCP for violating Hong Kong’s basic freedoms at around the same time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/politics/china-vatican-hack.html
Although Pope Francis’ playing footsie with the CCP has deeply disappointed large swathes of the Catholic faithful in China and Hong Kong, the HK diocese’s letter to principals and supervisors of Catholic primary and secondary schools warning them to guard against the politicisation of their campuses and to urge students to abide by the law is squarely in the students’ interests as well as being in the interest of the Church’s mission in this part of the world.
To urge students to do otherwise would be deeply irresponsible.
Re the Oxford University story, I note that Mr. Chan King-wai is also on the board of Old Tung’s Our Hong Kong Foundation. He’s displaying quite a magnificent hairstyle here: https://www.ourhkfoundation.org.hk/en/node/1038
P.S. It seems the news is from May 2019
https://foundation.hkbu.edu.hk/en/node/9545#.Xy0bWCj7TIU
There can be no causal relationship between the Chinese hacking and Hong Kong’s Catholic schools’ diligent, nay eager, promotion of the law of the land to their young charges. The Vatican cannot be bullied (nor blackmailed) because it has nothing to hide, and our books are an open book. I’m sure there’s some other perfectly good reason.
@ Stanley Lieber
“To urge students to do otherwise would be deeply irresponsible.”
Yes, indeed, but they don’t have to promote it either.
https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200×800/public/d8/images/methode/2020/08/07/18104428-d87e-11ea-a9df-dfa023813e67_image_hires_171941.JPG?itok=yamsqMPJ&v=1596791988
I am slightly surprised that’s it not using simplified characters
Ha ha! Keep on going, Joshua – keep driving the troll mad. Let’s hope he gets taken away by the men in white coats soon.
Good news, y’all. Yesterday’s missing person has been found. He was a 47- year old man with a mental disability and the mind of a 7 year old. He is now safe and sound at home. Apparently he had joined the Police Tactical Unit without telling his mother.
Quite frankly, I couldn’t give a toss about the knots into which the Roman church in Hong Kong appears to be tying itself.
After all, this is the institution which has produced such wrong ‘uns as Curry Lamb and Sir Donald Duck. That said, the sainted Martin Lee and the fragrant Audrey Eu also lead with the left foot.
Dear, oh dear. What a conundrum.
“Fact is, he’s too stoopid to say anything without reading off his I-Phone what some guru has concocted for him to voice.”
@Reactor #4 Stop projecting your own intellectual failure on to Joshua Wong you fucking dimwit. And if Joshua drives you so mad then it sounds like what he is doing works so you’re wrong.
Kong Tsung-gan mentions that the US-Hong Kong extradition treaty has been suspended but if I recall, it hasn’t been finalized yet since HK didn’t do it’s “tit for tat” and *suspend* the treaty on their side like they did with other countries who suspended their respective extradition treaties. Can anyone confirm if I am right or wrong on this?
“7th August 2020 – (Hong Kong) Hong Kong’s economy has been hit hard under the raging COVID-19 epidemic, and the number of foreign expatriates coming to work in Hong Kong has dropped drastically. The number of work visas for overseas people issued by the Immigration Department in the first half of this year dropped by about 60% compared with the same period last year, from 19,756 in the first half of last year to only 7,717 in the first half of this year.”
In addition only two border crossing are left open and a few hundred passengers fly in every day. Cruises have been canx.
So how come domestic helpers are left waiting for weeks for their work visas when the number of arrivals has been drastically reduced?
Perhaps the ex boss at Immigration, now Sec for Constitutional, has seconded staff to serve his new gig, like the police appropriated traffic wardens?
Especially for the troll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HounzaXV4LE
I imagine Mark Bradley spending most of his life stool-hopping around his septic tank. Once or twice a week, though, I lift up the rim of the lid and lob in a bit of light; within seconds he’s thrashing around expletivizing himself into a frenzy. It’s quite bizarre, but, notably, it is one of the outcomes of billions of years of biological evolution. Assuming David Attenborough has still not kicked the bucket, maybe he could make a related documentary.
KONG Tsung-gan turns out to be an American “Gwailo” who has now left HK.
Are we disappointed ?