Seems they usually appear on Fridays…
Pan-dem figures including Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Jimmy Lai, Cyd Ho and ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung are sentenced to prison terms for inciting and/or attending an unauthorized assembly – the march on October 1, 2019.
(The defendants had earlier delivered pleas of mitigation. A translation of Long Hair’s.)
A chart here shows how sentences for unauthorized assembly have become harsher, from a HK$500 fine 20 years ago to 18-month prison sentences today.
(Does judge Amanda Woodcock bear an uncanny resemblance to Shawnie – the brutalized girl in a novel of the same name, noteworthy for being written partly in Bristolian?)
In the High Court, judge Esther Toh denies Claudia Mo bail in part because of text messages with the BBC, NYT and other international media, which are deemed evidence of ‘continuing’ to ‘endanger national security’. Surely the BBC and other parties in this correspondence must also be suspects? The same judge had previously denied bail to Andrew Wan in part for having called for people to ‘say no to totalitarianism’.
A Hong Kong student is jailed for more than four years for hitting a water barrier with a hiking stick.
A pro-Beijing barrister becomes head of the police complaints body. It doesn’t seem to do much. A thread on the deteriorating quality of holders of this office over the years.
Not content with banning the June 4 vigil, the government issues a warning that anyone ‘publicizing’ it might get a year in prison, and anyone ‘attending’ could get five years. The Chinese Communist Party is clearly wetting itself at the thought of people quietly burning candles in Victoria Park. (What about talking about it? Or thinking about it?) It seems you can go there and not burn a candle (unless the cops seal the place off – sounds probable), or be elsewhere and still burn a candle. Seriously hard to work out what threatens national security these days.
The Hong Kong government devises a system whereby people who have been fully vaccinated will be able to travel free of some anti-Covid restrictions. You can tell it’s a local officials’ idea because it applies only to bankers, and the conditions remain so complex and onerous it is of little use anyway.
For light relief, Cartoon of the Month Awards go to Zunzi (seriously, agonizingly not suitable for squeamish men) and Harry…
The Woodcock
The Woodcock is a tidy bird
Whose mode preferred
Is Law and Order.
She sings a song she heard
Over the border.
Alas! Her feathers tremble
When other birds assemble
Disturbing peace and quiet.
Their acts resemble
Danger, riot.
The noisy birds are pressed,
Pinioned, to her nest
And hear her stern decision.
Sing no more – and rest
In prison.
The other songbirds cease
Which pleases the police.
The Woodcock’s call
Of prison-cell and peace
Is best of all.
Fridays do appear to be bad news days in Hong Kong. But, then, most weekdays. Usually we get a respite on weekends — but this weekend brought the Security Bureau threat of up to five years imprisonment for going to Victoria Park to light a candle this Friday evening and, also, reports — as yet unconfirmed — about the case of the 47 democrats being moved to the High Court from the Magistracy (and, in the process, their maximum jail sentences, if/when found guilty, going from 7 years to life).
https://hk.appledaily.com/news/20210530/HNNL5VJDFVA4ROZ7FTUAGP3TO4/
Amidst it all, I can’t help thinking of how the authorities were telling protestors that if they stopped the violence, they’d be merciful. Instead, what happened after the protestors turned from street protests to try to combat the pandemic was that things just got made worse and worse for Hong Kong.
Most magistrates and district court judges are former DOJ prosecutors so they’re inherently law and order types predisposed to convict more than acquit.
I wonder if being in possession of a candle on Friday would be considered against the NSL and punishable?
Yet tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people have attended unauthorized marches, gatherings, demonstrations, but they were never arrested.
Why were they not liable for what are deemed illegal acts?
How about the people that voted in the primary election?
600 thousand people voted, and more importantly, supported the idea.
Wait till we find out that anyone who supports a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be breaching the National Security Legislation.
Think about it.
It’s time Hong Kong stopped comemmorating the Tienanmen Square massacre. The spineless mainland populace deserve no sympathy, they have spent 30 years in pursuit of iphones and other tat instead of hunting down members of the communist party and skinning them alive on YouTube. It’s hard to feel sorry for people who wilfully pretend that the event one is supposed to feel sorry for never happened.
Still, it’s not too late for Hong Kongers to hunt down local collaborators and skin them alive on YouTube.
Is it just coincidence that some of the harshest – and many would say, most unreasonable – sentences are being handed down by female judges?
@smiley
I’ll let you know.
I’m getting an eerie feeling that the not-so-innocent Pope and the Rectum#4 troll may be one…
@Din Dan Che you should use the teddy bear to show the nurse where you feel eerie. Conflating obedience to the CCP with all-out insurgency could be a medical issue.
Actually, Judge Woodcock looks like the kinkiest sex doll you could imagine. It’s the plasticine skin tone and vacant stare….
That plasticine skin tone she glowingly exudes comes from many years of having FANCL bottled Guizhou peasant semen baths.
For too long Beijing has allowed the hostile west to shame them about the events of June 4th. Instead, the motherland should celebrate June 4th loud and proud, for it was on that day that the Communist Party scored a glorious victory against foreign agents and subversive counter-revolutionary elements, thereby securing a stable and prosperous future. It should be a great party. Honour the martyrs of the People’s Liberation Army and rejoice in the crushing of the people’s enemies!
@Din Dan Che
I was thinking that, too.
@Reactor #4
Can we get your opinion on @steve’s suggestion that Amanda Woodcock’s likeness would make for a good-time sex doll?
@Hammy
Personally, I would find the over-thickened neck a little off putting. That said, there is a sizable number who have a penchant for bouncy-castle sex dolls, so I am confident there would be a market for such a product.