An article by a Hong Kong medic about police dragging injured people out of hospitals. (Some more here.)
The crowdfunding campaign to prosecute Brits serving in the force for human-rights abuses has reached its target. (Apple Daily report.) Not sure how this extraterritorial UK law works, but could the valiant overseas inspectors conceivably end up in exile?
In which case, will the CCP give the expat cops Chinese citizenship when they retire? Maybe, like other former loyal and trusted cadres and national heroes, they will be allocated housing in a special compound where they and their families can live out their days in modest comfort. If not in fancy Shenzhen, at least some suburb of quiet Zhaoqing. And of course, in recognition of their service to the motherland, they will qualify for state commissary perks – perhaps a regular supply of Heinz baked beans and frozen fish fingers with lashings of ketchup.
Will they convert to their new homeland’s ceremonial ways and don medals for National Day parades? Or will they secretly continue to celebrate the Queen’s birthday behind closed doors? There’s a moody, gloomy novel here – Kingsley Amis’s Old Devils as rewritten by Graham Greene.
I was brought up on dusty back-copies of National Geographic, which was typically full of long illustrated features about how the modern world (literacy, cars, TV) was encroaching on and eradicating the cultures of jungle- and mountain-dwelling tribes in New Guinea and the Amazon. It’s jarring to see the magazine now doing Hong Kong loses its way of life.
Re the notion of prosecuting a number of Brits in the HK Police, it’s just wishful thinking. It’s up there with spending 5 minutes pondering what you’d do if you landed an 8-figure lottery win (naturally in pounds sterling), or you suddenly found yourself with a fairy godmother who each morning, as you woke from your slumber, was there at the end of the bed offering you another three wishes, and possibly a bit of action in the old trouser department.
It looks like the Secretary for the Civil Service (why him anyway) has failed to plan ahead for the Universal Test.
[Sophia] Chan said as of 8pm on Wednesday, some 278,000 people had given samples in the first two days of testing. More than 800,000 people have registered to take tests in the programme.
Chan said 49,000 samples have been tested so far, but because of the large numbers involved, she could not say whether any of the people had tested positive.
Meanwhile on a different radio station:
The government is boosting the quota at several coronavirus testing centres and considering extending its free testing service into a third week as the Secretary for the Civil Service, Patrick Nip, revealed that laboratories can test only around two million samples in a week.
Speaking to a Commercial Radio programme on Wednesday, Nip said the labs could only handle around 300,000 specimens a day.
So, with the verification re-testing that has to be done to weed out the false positives, the backlog is going to grow and grow. And all for a test that is only valid at the time it was taken.
Every community-wide government initiative (except giving out free money) will now be treated as an opportunity to vote against the Lam administration via non-cooperation, and it’s only going to get worse.
Thanks to the idiots in charge and their refusal to talk to the pro-democracy leaders to reach a peaceful settlement, Hong Kong soon will be truly ungovernable.
Thanks, China.
The Amis/Greene mash-up idea is genius. Tempted to have a go myself.
Meanwhile….has anyone seen Dr Winnie Tang’s article in EJ Insight to – shit you not – “MAKE HONG KONG A STARTUP HUB”?? (There! I said the “H” word!!)
“Making THE PLACE a good choice for GLOBAL startups…” Really? Are they ready to sign over all their IP to the CCP? No mention of NSL, of course….
LMFAO
I do wonder why EJ Insight bothers with her, she is “expert” in so many things (there again, aren’t we all). She’s a freelance assistant lecturer in at least 5 HKU departments, but, above all, part of CH Tung’s Our HK Foundation – something she fails to disclose on her EJ I and SCMP bios.
The Old Devils… Not one of my favourite Amis works but I like the idea of a Greene makeover. Alun Weaver, master of espionage, in a linen suit prancing on some far-flung Hong Kong beach as he prepares to do something or other for king and country. That is until he falls in love with a beautiful old damsel called LAM Curry, whose name reminds him of home. She would have a thick Welsh accent, naturally, boyo.
I’ve just made myself feel ill.
Jimmy Lai found not guilty in intimidation case
That’s another magistrate crossed off the National Insecurity cases list.
Breaking News
Four of [the six who] tested positive were previously confirmed patients.
Presumably out of the 49,000 whose samples had been tested up to 0800 this morning. The Elect of Eleven can now boast the scheme is a resounding success.
The Twitter link is just a rehash of the first link, – a claim of police brutality in Hospital premises. Although the shot suspect was formally “arrested” while in hospital, I refuse to believe that the police were stupid enough to manhandle him out of an ICU and off the Hospital premises. I hope “arrested” just means that a guard would have been put on the ward, or something like that.
So, two million dollars have been raised to allow Luke De Pulford to engage Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne* to make a case in London for the prosecution of five as yet un-named police expat HK Police officers. This looks personal and vindictive, if not downright racist.
Whoever they turn out to be, these five are not Balkan Warlords, after all.
Will the London Legal Eagles be opening an office here in Hong Kong to try to get some witness statements ? I’m sure Big Lychee or Apple Daily will tell us the details in due course. Two hundred thousand pounds will fund a lot of fine lunches.
Meanwhile congratulation to Jimmy LAI on today’s aquittal.
Meerkats – you obviously missed the video where a po po was manhandling the kid after he was shot on the street in SWH. The kid was losing consciousness and the po po was trying to make him sit up and search him.
Regarding Jimmy Lai’s trial, why hasn’t the name of the accuser been released?
From what I’ve read, the accuser was assigned by a rival (and unnamed?) newspaper to follow Jimmy Lai on a regular (daily?) basis. And he had been doing so for 3-4 years by the point of the incident debated about in the trial.
All of this smacks of a concerted CCP surveillance operation, long before any of the new security law shenanigans were foisted upon the city.
@Hamantha – not unnamed; Oriental Daily News. Older readers may recall that this tabloid was founded by a pair of brothers whose other main business was heroin dealing. Clearly it still keeps unsavoury company.
@ Low Profile
Yes, indeed the newspaper was named, but NOT its reporter who was the accuser.