The Security Secretary talks about fourth day of the sixth month of the Gregorian calendar, without actually mentioning the date or its significance…
Authorities will take action against people who plan to harm national security on “a special occasion in a few days time,” Hong Kong’s security chief has said. Sunday will mark the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang did not specify which “special occasion” he was referring to while speaking to reporters on Monday, but said “many people” would use the occasion to endanger national security.
“It will be a special occasion in a few days’ time, many people will use this special occasion to commit acts endangering national security, such as promoting Hong Kong independence and intending to commit subversion,” Tang said, without naming any individuals or groups.
“However, I want to tell these people that if you commit these acts, we will definitely take decisive action and arrest you, and will prosecute you if there is evidence. You will not get lucky,” the security chief added.
Is he talking about lighting candles in parks?
Some mid-week links. Probably not much happening here for the next couple of days, so back Thursday or Friday…
Protest-era chronicler Kong Tsung-gan (who became the subject of a frenzy of righteous mouth-frothing a while back, for some forgettable reason or other) has compiled the stories of dozens of people who have left Hong Kong…
What has been occurring in HK over the past year and more is nothing less than the relentless dismantling of a liberal society, a spectacle encountered not all that often in this day and age. It’s like watching in fast motion a film played backwards — all of things that once were built up are now smashed, destroyed, undone.
The Diplomat on Beijing’s confusion of ‘de-risking’ with containment…
Europe has ample justification for reducing its reliance on Chinese supplies out of self-defense, even completely absent any interest in suppressing China’s economic development. China’s inability to see the difference between “containment” and “de-risking” is a side effect of its refusal to engage in the introspection of its own behavior, which would be a necessary step toward remolding European policies.
The Economist (paywalled) on Beijing’s hostility towards gay rights activists.
For the same message is delivered, time and again, whenever policemen question gay-rights advocates (and sometimes their family members). It is heard when university chiefs punish students for handing out rainbow flags, or when officials press landlords to evict non-profit groups. The message is that sexual minorities pose a political risk. True, some officials and state-backed scholars also call same-sex love an affront to mainstream Chinese morality, and a threat to young people whose patriotic duty is to marry and have more babies for the Motherland. But activists report that, during interrogations, national security is emphasised much more than morality. Despite the political chill, gay people (as well as bars and dating apps) enjoy far more tolerance than they did a generation ago—but only if they keep it quiet. In today’s China, forming a community is a graver offence than being gay.
…gay groups, feminists, labour activists and ethnic minorities are all treated as potential tools of subversion by a hostile West. In Mr Xi’s China, the marginalised represent a security threat…
This probably partly explains the Hong Kong government’s lack of enthusiasm for the forthcoming Gay Games – along with squeamishness among puritanical bureaucrats and opportunistic anti-Western agitation among pro-Beijing figures.
Are we discussing ‘civilizational warfare’? We are now. An anti-’woke’ outlet compares US and Chinese regulation of culturally ruinous social media platforms…
Western TikTok is dominated by moronic clips of teenage girls gyrating and lip-synching to strange and repetitive noises purporting to be music, dangerous juvenile challenges, like swallowing excess Benadryl and then filming your consequent hallucinations, licking toilets, eating cereal from other people’s mouths with a spoon or wetting yourself on-film, alongside indoctrination via self-made propaganda shorts for causes like Black Lives Matter, climate change and transgenderism.
Michael Turton on Beijing’s designs on Taiwan…
One of the ways that pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) peaceniks forward PRC propaganda is by presenting its fabricated history of the Taiwan-China relationship as accepted, mainstream history. Like the faces of astronauts on rocket sleds reshaped by high GEE effects, every conversation about Taiwan is distorted by this stream of effluent.
As Hong Kong prepares its own ‘false news’ laws, Asia Sentinel responds to a Singapore government demand, under its Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act of 2019, to ‘correct’ a story. In brief: nope.
CORRECTED – USE THIS ONE
How do you make a Hong Kong civil servant scream twice?
1. Talk about Gay Games
2. Wipe your nose on his net curtains
Something like that…
Anyways, here in Florida we don’t have protests, we just have shootings. Seems a much better way of dealing with people than banning them.
Gay rights though is so passé these days. It’s all trans rights now.
You see – that’s what’s going on in Hong Kong.
People with obvious impedimenta like golf clubs, lots of money, liberal education and foreign passports are passing themselves off as card-carrying, red book toting, Xi Thought hugging Commies and their dicks are showing – if they ever had anything much to show in the in the first place, you understand – dicks here defined as Gucci shoes, thought crimes, kids studying in America and cottages in the Cotswolds.
The Communist Party ought to stamp out these trans wannabe Commies now. Let’s have real Commie men – and nubile women in tight Mao suits.
Hurrah!
“It will be a special occasion in a few days’ time, many people will use this special occasion to commit acts endangering national security…”
“However, I want to tell these people that if you commit these acts, we will definitely take decisive action and arrest you, and will prosecute you if there is evidence. You will not get lucky,” the security chief added.
What utter, total, pathetic, cowardly, little rat twats.
What I find astonishing is the prevailing apathy with regard to the Lohas Park load bearing wall incident. How many folk were aware that opening up a wall could bring down a 50 floor building?
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3222168/risk-building-collapse-hongkongers-warned-against-removing-modifying-load-bearing-walls-flats-after
In view of the constant reno jobs blasting us on a daily basis this can hardly be an isolated incident. The Lohas Park reno came to attention only because some professional spotted the issue when the proud resident posted images of the alterations.
Anyone who contacts Buildings Dept with regard to concern re the integrity of extensive reno jobs at their building gets a curt fob off response.
If only a fraction of the resources now devoted to NS were to be expended on tackling dangers to life and limb ………………..
Off topic for this post, but did I see some HK worthy spouting off that the city needs some new tourist attractions? One can only shudder at the thought of what they will come up with.
If only someone had the foresight to come up with a similar idea for HK that is a reality in London:
“London was once the planet’s busiest port, and the colossal dimensions of these docklands are best appreciated from above. Pause atop the Royal Victoria Dock Footbridge, where a sign guides your smartphone to augmented-reality readings by young local poets.”
(Of course, the HK government would never let “young local poets” anywhere near anything, except a police cell)
This extract comes from a piece in the New York Times (paywalled, but a friend copied and pasted it for me). It is about the new Elizabeth Line that runs right across London and is enabling better access to outer suburbs. The article is wonderful, some of the best travel writing I’ve encountered for a long time.)
I can’t post a link, but its called A Journey Across London on the Elizabeth Line, by Mark Vanhoenacker (fab pix, too).
@MaryM – one also wonders what the Lohas Park management office run by MTR Corporation was doing, allowing demolition contractors in, without the usual prior and formal permission and details of proposed demolition work. Will MTR prosecute itself, one asks?
Archive.ph is your friend: https://archive.is/wVfhS
Re; Real Pro; Surely the CCTV cameras would have captured images of large bins stacked with sawn off rebars being removed in the lifts?
Yet another example of the folly of allowing the developers to automatically acquire the lucrative “see no, hear no, speak no” management contracts.