Public reaction was so bad after rampaging cops knocked over a pregnant woman and piled onto a 12-year-old schoolgirl a few weeks ago that the Hong Kong Police are going to take firm, tough, no-nonsense action. They will be tightening discipline – not over their traumatized/drug-crazed/maladjusted men, but over the media who report the unpleasantness.
The broadcasting regulator is reprimanding radio shows that air negative comments about the police. It seems the cops or their friends are tuning in to phone-in shows waiting for citizens to express less than total admiration for Asia’s once-finest, so they can make solitary formal complaints.
And the police are expanding their control over the press by assuming the right to ‘recognize’ only reporters from bigger established news organizations. That means that at protests reporters from the small independent outlets, student media and freelancers – who make public much of the cops’ brutality – will be liable for arrest for illegal assembly. That will obviously bar them from observing other police actions, which you could argue is tantamount to police tampering with evidence.
This will leave only the established local press and international reporters qualifying as media. The former are mostly owned by pro-Beijing tycoons or organizations. The latter are being squeezed out of Hong Kong by Mainland-style visa-restrictions. Police image problem solved.
Solved, ecept for the part where everybody and their mother has a camera in their phone.
Not so fast, brother, not so fast. There is also a ‘human’ face to the force-formerly-known -as-Asia’s-finest. Kind police uncles & aunties who hand out small packets of paper tissues in the street as a gesture of goodwill for that Christmas-comes-early feeling. Or simply to absorb the blood after some hyper-excited plod started swinging his baton wildly for no apparent reason. The Consulum PR company is certainly earning its billings.
People caught filming police actions with their phones will be arrested for “obstruction of justice”.
Removing the “pavement blockers” is a key step. Also, the overseas handlers often pose as photo-journos and “direct traffic” in front of the police lines. Thankfully, though, the Government’s Covid-smothering impositions means that most if not all of the puppeteers are now outside of the city and cannot get back hence the fizzling out of the disturbances. Also, the cash inducements for 200-300 nothing-to-lose young people have been stymied.
Not good news for the HK Free Press, one imagines. Weren’t they banned from attending press conferences because they are a digital news outlet? So much for Hong Kong being an innovative tech-hub-zone-beacon.
Sorry, government press conferences.
“Not good news for the HK Free Press, one imagines. Weren’t they banned from attending press conferences because they are a digital news outlet? So much for Hong Kong being an innovative tech-hub-zone-beacon.”
That policy changes and HK Free Press is registered with the government
‘Removing the “pavement blockers” is a key step. Also, the overseas handlers often pose as photo-journos and “direct traffic” in front of the police lines. Thankfully, though, the Government’s Covid-smothering impositions means that most if not all of the puppeteers are now outside of the city and cannot get back hence the fizzling out of the disturbances. Also, the cash inducements for 200-300 nothing-to-lose young people have been stymied.’
Not one scrap of evidence has been offered to support this claim – going back to when 689 started it back in 2014.
So all protestors were earning $300 every day they were protesting? And not one piece of evidence has been presented. That’s an incredible cover up.
@Andrew: Plus with all the free sex they were getting we should see a baby boom of teenage pregnancies by now.
Apparitions that came to me on seeing the odious tripe from “I really should see…” were Nasty Vittachi and the more spurious Rectum#69 – falsehoods, upon lies