Pamela Ho, aged 12, makes an official complaint about the valiant HK Police dragging her to the ground when she was out shopping for art supplies in Mongkok. My prediction: next week, 30 cops will raid her home and arrest her for incitement to seditiously possess a furry Hello Kitty dangling from her school bag.
She will then be denied bail and put in jail until a trial in April. At least, that’s what has happened to Jimmy Lai, following his arrest on suspicion of breaching the lease terms of an office. (HK Watch statement on the case.) Tam Tak-chi will be in jail until May awaiting trial in a NatSec Court for things like ‘uttering seditious words’. Ted Hui is well out of it.
Some links for the weekend…
Much of Beijing officials’ argument justifying the NatSec Law, arrests, purges and attacking 12-year-old girls draw on Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt. ‘Class struggle’ just doesn’t cut it these days. Atlantic explains.
District Council member Michael Mo’s op-ed for DW on what the imprisonment of Joshua Wong means. (Also in Chinese.)
The SCMP is now pushing the CCP fake news that Covid originated outside China. Could this be the same SCMP that reported last March that the virus was first documented in the Mainland as early as November 2019? Yes it could!
In the paper itself, legal academics propose a de facto amnesty for people arrested during protests. They are right in saying that the arrests and trials are breeding resentment when the community needs reconciliation (you could argue the politicized nature of the arrests and prosecutions – often with little evidence – is bringing government agencies into disrepute). But they miss the fact that the CCP is behind this, and control through fear is all that matters.
Most right-thinking people instinctively know that pro-Beijing lawmaker Holden Chow is a waste of space. But he has asked a legislator’s question about a noble and selfless bunch we’ve all seen on TV and wondered about. All you want to know about the Dead Removal Teams.
Leftists are dismayed at Hongkongers’ insistence on fighting the CCP without prioritizing the need for workers’ solidarity against evil capitalism. Meanwhile, some anti-CCP activists in Hong Kong – eg nativists – are getting caught up in far-right conspiracy theories (happens in Taiwan too). Lausan tries to figure it all out. If in doubt, blame colonialism.
While we’re blaming colonialism: fascinating thread on how defunct 19th Century Cantonese pronunciation lives on in Hong Kong’s romanized place names.
Bitter Winter on Xi Jinping’s new blockbuster On the Party’s Propaganda and Ideological Work, which includes such gems as…
…we must continue to accept the nourishment of Marxist philosophical wisdom, and more consciously adhere to and apply the dialectical materialist world outlook and methodology.
If that’s not enough, here’s China Media Project on a faux pas by state media. Someone at Xinhua mentioned ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’ alongside ‘Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military’ as if they are of the same status. But the former is supposed to evolve over time into plain ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, which will be an umbrella for – guiding – all the sub-Xi Jinping Thoughts (on the Military, Diplomacy, Jelly Beans, etc), and ultimately on a par with ‘Mao Zedong Thought’. So, big slap on wrist for a news editor. Phew.
From Nikkei Asia, more and more countries are rejecting China’s claims in the South China Sea.
In a rare display of common sense, Beijing will not make it illegal to point out that ‘traditional Chinese medicine’ is unscientific voodoo-crap.
The Diplomat asks whether Taiwan has always been part of China. (Answer: occasionally, when it wasn’t Japanese or Dutch.)
In the release about Dead removal Teams, was that an ironic statement about not being able “to attract new blood”…?
Attempting to nail down your position using pronouncements from “Lord (David) Alton” (about as “wet” as a “wet Liberal” could ever was when “Liberal” really did mean mean “Liberal”) suggest that it’s game up.
Actually, “Lord David Alton” is the sort of moniker I could very well imagine being given to a minor-role dandy in a Christmas panto. Perhaps the best man to the Prince who ended up tracking down Cinderella.
Luo Huining, director of Beijing’s liaison office in the city, also said the ideological source of the chaos in recent years could be traced to those still clinging on to the colonial legal system and who failed to recognise and accept the changes to the city’s constitution that took place when China resumed sovereignty in 1997. (SCMP report)
That’s a pretty definitive statement about the future of HK’s common law system from the Party Secretary.
Any possession of Hello Kitty is de facto a crime against the public weal and floggings should ensue. “Give the bearer of this note 15 lashes” Orwell, G.
HSBC appears to have realized that averting a run on the bank today was a better option than pandering to the outrageous manipulation of the term “money laundering”, Oxford definition:
“Money laundering is the illegal process of making large amounts of money generated by a criminal activity, such as drug trafficking or terrorist funding, appear to have come from a legitimate source. The money from the criminal activity is considered dirty, and the process “launders” it to make it look clean”
and has released some of Ted Hui’s family accounts.
The cash collected via various community crowd funding activities was donated voluntarily and there have been no reports of donor complaints with regard to their custody or disbursement. No victim, no crime.
Meanwhile real scammers are having a field day because law enforcement is too busy ‘investigating’ fictitious crime to devote resources to stemming what has now become a tsunami judging by the marked increase recently in the number of dodgy calls and online messages circulating daily.