We know what has happened: there has been a vengeful and comprehensive assault on all of the freedoms that we associate with an open society. Take freedom of speech: journalists have been locked up, proprietors have been incarcerated and newspapers’ funds have been frozen. 5/
Anyone who protests this is locked up. People are locked up for wanting to light a candle to mark the 4 June vigil of Tiananmen every year. The Pillar of Shame, as it was called, in the University of Hong Kong, reminding people of 4 June, was taken down in the dead of night.
6/
扼要講述香港現況後,彭定康便這樣冷諷中国:
My main critic when I was the last colonial oppressor was a very distinguished diplomat, Percy Cradock, who used to say—and was happy to be quoted as such—of the leadership in Beijing that they may be “thuggish dictators” 8/
but they are “men of their word”. We know that at least one of those things is correct.
(當我是末代殖民壓迫者時,最落力批評我的一位,就是出類拔萃的外交官柯利達。他常常說——也樂於有人引用他的原話——北京領導人可能是「暴戾兇狠的獨裁者」,但他們是「言而有信的人」。9/
大家知道至少有一樣是正確的。)
聽見彭定康漫不經心的自嘲為「the last colonial oppressor(末代殖民壓迫者)」時,就忍不住笑了。當然,這跟「killing two stones with one bird」所引發的笑,是「兩個層次」的事。不要看輕這種英式幽默,因為幽默感的靈魂永遠不在搞笑,而在自嘲。懂得自嘲的人,10
...every one of my successors as chief executive in Hong Kong had either a foreign passport or members of their family with foreign passports. The present chief executive had a British passport, which she gave up to become chief executive, and her husband and 12/
her sons have British passports. I am not against that: I hope they enjoy the liberties and freedoms that come with being a British citizen with that passport. But what is rather an unhappy paradox is that the people at the moment—13/
the quislings—including members of the police force, doing the persecuting, have British passports, and those who are being persecuted and locked up do not. I think we should address that rather unhappy imbalance in due course.
(接替我治港的歷任行政長官,14/
持有英國護照,而那些被迫害、拘禁的人卻沒有。我認為應該在適當時候,處理這個令人不快的失衡問題。)
2020年7月,彭定康已形容林鄭月娥為「lamentable Quisling figure in Hong Kong’s history」;今天則用眾數「quislings」,可見他認為問題已不限於林鄭一人。Quisling一字,16/
結果政變失敗,令他臭名遠播。從那時開始,英國報章便常用「Quisling」一字代表賣國賊,更有社論讚揚此字的音義渾然天成——讀音像暗示某種「滑溜而委蛇(slippery and tortuous)」的東西。
要理解「Quisling」的精髓,最好是參考1941年邱吉爾對盟軍代表所說的話:
18/
A vile race of Quislings—to use a new word which will carry the scorn of mankind down the centuries—is hired to fawn upon the conqueror, to collaborate in his designs and to enforce his rule upon their fellow countrymen while grovelling low themselves.
19/