So the arrest of Lam Cheuk-ting is supposed to help corroborate a revised history of the Yuen Long attacks on July 21 last year. RTHK report here. HKFP summary of the shifting official version of the events.
The live-streams were biased, and everything you think you know is wrong. Lam’s role is transformed from victim to suspect. Triad thugs’ assaults on commuters, which you thought were with police connivance and possibly Liaison Office coordination, become an equally matched ‘gang fight’ to which cops responded promptly and impartially.
Interesting timing: this comes just days before the anniversary of 8-31 – in which it was cops, rather than triads, who rampaged in an MTR station and attacked passengers. (Maybe the police called the triads for help but they were busy.) Amusing timing: the Society of Publishers in Asia gave the NYT article ‘Where Were Hong Kong’s Police?’ an award last night.
So drastic is the rewriting of the narrative that the HK Police are, as Xinqi Su puts it, ‘blatantly correcting their own record’. She shreds their new version of events with a series of questions. More on this absurdity, including reports from the cops’ press conference, here.
An explosion of on-line interest in the incident suggests the HK Police are digging themselves into a bigger hole. But as befits an extension of the CCP, they feel they have the right and ability to define new truths.
They would certainly like to convince themselves and the blue-ribbon/pro-Beijing camp. The 7-21 attacks destroyed the HKP’s reputation in a few hours. The force’s simple-minded management might see this rewrite as a morale-booster. The event also weighs on pro-Beijing politicians, who still fumble for an explanation of what happened.
Do the cops expect this fantasy to be believed by the rest of us? Their PR skills are dismal at the best of times – if you are reduced to insisting a cop was ‘pushing’ rather than ‘patting’ a gangster on the shoulder, you look like idiots. (They have massively pissed off moderate pan-dems, among others. Will this convince them to boycott LegCo?) Gwyneth Ho says…
It is not possible for the authority to distort the facts of the 721 incident unless the government of Hong Kong shut down Facebook and YouTube in Hong Kong.
Beijing’s officials – masters of these dark arts – are in charge behind the scenes, so more ‘sophisticated’ explanations offer themselves. Maybe the point is simply to lie brazenly as a display of unaccountability and power, to demoralise dissenters. Or to wear people down with yet another outrage to provoke yet more futile anger, ahead of more NatSec Law round-ups and more of Hong Kong’s continued fall.
The CCP has learnt through decades of guiding the masses toward correct thinking that by erasing inconvenient facts and replacing them with more defensible fake ones, it can ultimately reshape reality. In replicating this in Hong Kong, they aim at first to dilute or drown out the truth. In time, they hope, a Yuen Long ‘conflict between two sides’ story will become the default, or at least rival, account, because who knows what to believe? Then maybe they can rewrite that – and 7-21 will become a dastardly ambush by vicious commuters and pregnant women against innocent Yuen Long triads. Hey – it works in the Mainland, where nothing much happened on 6-4.
Yup. CCP HKPF are using truly Orwellian tactics to rewrite history. “The Ministry of Truth’ is upon us. Read “1984” . Its all there.
Totally agree that they are digging a huge hole for themselves. It won’t end well.
The most important question will be “will a judge believe that”.
And the next question is when will judges finally make it to the sanctions list.
They are learning from Putin. The point isn’t to tell plausible lies but to drown us all in a firehose of bullshit. It overwhelms people and makes them cynical and jaded. Jaded people are apathetic and passive. They know you are lying to them, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
Honestly i opened a Bottle of Wine yesterday over the news that this 2 Gang Leaders has been arrested.
“…unless the government of Hong Kong shut down Facebook and YouTube in Hong Kong.”
Unfortunately, I’d say that’s exactly the direction that the government is steering.
My (HK Chinese and not fully yellow) wife’s comment listening to SS Chan’s performance on TV was that his voice was shaking and he was very nervous. I wonder how well he slept last night.
So how long (or, rather, soon) will it be before the government of Hong Kong shuts down Facebook and YouTube in Hong Kong?
China wants Hong Kong to be Xianggang, just another city in China. Beware of what you wish for…
@CorrianderPhilanderer + YTSL
Judging by the recent denial of a work visa for a fairly impartial journalist, possibly not long…
The beauty of Russian propaganda methods is that you don’t have to block YouTube and Facebook. You just have to harass and intimidate opposition voices enough marginalise them and then flood the information environment with so much garbage that people have to spend way too much energy to pick the truth out. Eventually most people give up and go by the heuristic of “the truth is probably somewhere in the middle”. The midpoint between accuracy and insane bullshit is still bullshit.
Most Hong Kongers have VPNs now, blocking Facebook and Youtube isn’t going to do anything other than slow down network performance and cause more sanctions.
7-21 was the day that most of us lost ALL respect for local law enforcement, so, theoretically, there is nothing left for them to lose with regards to the majority of us.
On the bright side, the CCP is proving themselves to be wonderfully skilled at storytelling! One can only hope that a full-length feature film about the dastardly attacks by commuters on the pure loyalist triads is forthcoming.
It is just another step to make Hong Kongers resign to the CCP opppression, and become like Singaporeans. Remember the Singaporean Taxi driver: “They do what they want to do anyway” and “There is nothing we can do about it”.
The naive part of me thinks now that the cops are unleashed, unafraid, unaccountable and more than likely augmented by mandarin only speakers in the ranks, they will – after some time to blows by – be given the green light to go after the triads themselves, decimate the ranks and crush the honchos.
Why? Well after giving thanks for their loyal patriotism and attack dog order following, the CCPee will, as they inevitably do, start feeling the neurosis about an organization with a large membership that commands loyalty to the (illegal) organization and skirts bureaucratic, organizational norms while not under direct control of the Party and the Party needing to look good to the citizenry (once in a while) showing they are addressing “Law & Order” issues. Perhaps I’m being too tinfoil hat-ish.
There were good people on both sides … ahem
Chinese Netizen – I heard that a very high level (indeed) uniformed thug is actually from a triad family so I cannot see them disappearing any time soon.
Also, aren’t they just thugs for hire – both the triads and the uniformed ones – without any loyalty to anyone other than whoever pays them?
@Penny: true, but the cops get to pretend to the legitimacy of their “mission” and the fact that their salary comes from the People. Ha! No doubt triads, like the Mafia, try to go on roads to legitimacy over the years and placing their Manchurian Candidates inside the force is no doubt a common occurrence.
They both worship the same god.
“Triad thugs’ assaults on commuters, which you thought were with police connivance and possibly Liaison Office coordination, become an equally matched ‘gang fight’ to which cops responded promptly and impartially.”
So equally matched were both sides that one side’s rattan rods and metal poles were bent out of shape from repeated blows by the other side’s flesh and bone.
@Chinese Netizen, don’t forget that the “salary” of the triads also comes ftom the people. In a more direct manner with less bureocratic inefficiency, in fact, thus one could argue there is better value for money.