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Utterly scurrilous: This (imposed) leader of #HK has hidden from press & public since June 18 while the city's undergone one of the biggest crises in its history. Then she calls a sudden 4am press con w the police commissioner... news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/compon…
...both of whom should resign to take responsible for the crisis into which they pitched the city, and instead she attacks people who have been trying to meet her for weeks, and yet she's refused to meet them. Astounding. As recently as yesterday...
...the very moderate Legco pro-democracy leaders were trying to meet her to defuse the situation, and she refused, as she has repeatedly throughout the crisis. She says she wants to listen to voices, but won't meet anyone. Now this person smells an opportunity to shift focus...
...to 'protester violence' & swing public opinion, so she comes out from under her rock in the middle of the night. Beneath contempt. The fact that #HK is cursed w leaders like this (because of the system it's cursed w) is the root of the current crisis.
People have been telling her for weeks, Avoid an even worse situation & meet with people, but time and again, she's adamantly refused. We know that's because she's ordered by #CCP not to give in to protesters & remain silent, but this is just the shell of a person & a politician.
& because Carrie Lam wants to talk about 'violence', let's talk about 'violence', a word the media too has been using quite casually in the last 24hrs. There are many different kinds of violence. I say this as a firm advocate of nonviolence in all aspects of life....
...I would not do some things I have seen protesters do in the last few weeks & I have on several occasions tried to get fellow protesters to do things I didn't think were right. But whether or not you regard breaking into Legco as 'violent'...
...note that hardly ever in all the weeks of protests have young protesters attacked anyone physically. On June 12, there were a few dozen protesters throwing bottles, umbrellas & hardhats at heavily armed & armored police officers....
... but apart from that, most of the 'violence' that protesters have perpetrated has been against property, what would be considered 'criminal damage' under the law, & not against people. This despite the fact that police have attacked protesters, almost all of whom...
were entirely peaceful & unarmed, w teargas, rubber bullets, bean bag guns, batons & pepperspray in military-style assaults, & then afterwards characterized their actions as 'appropriate force'.
Then there is the issue of 'structural violence'. #HK suffers under the structural violence of having been denied its political rights continuously throughout its history, even in this post-handover period when it's been promised but denied universal suffrage.
How does one respond to that 'structural violence'? #HK people have responded for two decades with almost entirely peaceful protests numbering in the hundreds of thousands &, recently, even in the millions.
So those of you who (like Carrie Lam) are ready to berate a bunch of kids for breaking into Legco, what exactly do you suggest? If you are ready to condemn their 'violence', what approach do you suggest people who have been fighting for their rights for decades adopt?
Because, from our point of view, it really does seem like we've tried just about everything. I say this as someone who wants the #HK freedom struggle to remain nonviolent & hopes that nobody, whether protesters or police or anyone else, is injured.
I hope that in future the media will be a bit more precise when discussing 'violence', what kind it is, who it's being used by, & in what situation. If you don't, you risk being used by the authorities, the truly violent ones, who want to tar us with the label of 'violence'.
Ruling over us is the biggest dictatorship in the world w 1 of the biggest armies & a record of using it against its own people, and a huge #HK police force that's being used as a militia to carry out political objectives. That puts protester 'violence' in a more accurate context
One last thing: When #HK govt speaks of 'rule of law', it is to laugh. 1st of all, the govt is, quite literally, under both intl law & HK Basic Law, illegal, because not constituted by election under universal suffrage, as both require.
So we have an illegal govt lecturing us about 'rule of law' while continuing to deny us the basic right of universal suffrage. Secondly, since #UmbrellaMovement, HK govt has taken a page from #CCP playbook & used the law as a weapon against political opponents.
Over the past five years, I've documented 48 prosecutions of 33 pro-democracy leaders + hundreds of ordinary activists. In recent #UmbrellaMovement trial, it even made up new charges like 'inciting to incite public nuisance'. medium.com/@KongTsungGan/…
The question then becomes, how do you fight a govt that is illegal & using the law against political opponents? Again, if you have the answer, let us know, but please be a bit skeptical when HK govt & police start invoking 'rule of law'.
