A tragic wave of memory loss breaks out among Hong Kong pro-Beijing figures, including CY Leung and three current government ministers, about statements they signed in 1989 denouncing the June 4 massacre in Beijing.
That compulsory SIM card registration system that you and the rest of the public have called for will take effect March next year. (Background here. Obviously a command from the CCP. Can you imagine the Hong Kong government really doing something in response to popular demand?)
Seems you also now need a licence for a museum – at least, if it’s about June 4.
The League of Social Democrats announce that they won’t take part in the forthcoming ‘elections’. They couldn’t anyway: most of them are in jail, and the CCP’s candidate-screening mechanisms would almost certainly reject those who remain free. The same goes for any younger-generation/localist groups that have not disbanded or been proscribed. The more mainstream Civic Party, also with leading members in jail, was last heard talking about disbanding. Of the various splinter/fringe pan-dem groups, the ultra-moderate/pragmatic ADPL might be tempted to help the CCP out and play the role of solitary token-opposition useful idiots. Unless, of course, the venerable Democratic Party, in whole or in part, debase themselves by joining in.
Who among the English speaking community is deliberately tracking the waffling and misaligned hodgepodge approach the government is taking to quarantine, vaccination and public health?
I have yet to see a really good explanation of why some people are allowed to skip quarantine and others are not. I remember last year in June I arrived in Hong Kong from a long flight, and then was made to stand in a queue for two hours while I was registered for my COVID test and a 24 hour quarantine in a hotel. I saw whole families, who looked European in ancestry, and Asian in some cases, skip these lines and walk straight out of the terminal and into the airport proper, where they were not given tests or taken to the Asia Expo centre by bus, by the rest of “us lot.”
Does that still go on? What was that all about? And why do finance officials get a pass on this? What about those of us with vaccination records? Are we able to travel without having to return to Hong Kong and pay for a hotel for three weeks?
I would travel in a heart beat if I wasn’t made to come back and pay for my own hotel, when I have a perfectly good home in an isolated part of the New Territories.
Update re the June 4th Museum: “The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China said in a statement that it decided to close the museum until further notice so it could seek legal advice and protect the safety of staff members and visitors.” https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1593861-20210602.htm
For those who haven’t done so yet, would highly recommend a read of Louisa Lim’s “The Poeple’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited”. BTW, the 2015 paperback edition’s final chapter is about the Umbrella Movement and ends with a vignette suggesting that the institutional amnesia will indeed be the order of the day in Hong Kong too.
Re “popular demand”: in a place that’s resembling “1984” more and more by the day, you know it means minority demand. Just like “a tiny amount of people” means a whole heck of a lot of them/us.
@covidhussy
You have my sympathy.
However, it seems you may be a little bit out of touch with what’s been going on in Hong Kong for the past couple of years if you think you’re going to get any sensible answers to your eminently reasonable questions.
The only justification I can see for moderate democrats to continue trying to contest elections is to retain a toehold until some unspecified future, perhaps long after we are all dead, when there may be an opportunity for democratic transition. In such a scenario, Hong Kong will need someone who knows where the proverbial light switches are.
While contesting pointless elections is not strictly necessary for the retention of institutional memory, we do not know where else aspiring democrats, no matter how mild, will be allowed to hunker down. If the CCP proceeds to gut Hong Kong’s civil society entirely, any future departure from one-party rule is more likely to resemble Egypt than South Korea.
Of course this discussion might be totally irrelevant; Beijing’s conditions for patriotism may be so exacting that the most unorthodox candidate they will allow to stand will be James Tien.
@YTSL – and “the silent majority” means the minority that agrees with the government. And when the government says “there is no question of…” about something, you know there is a massive question they don’t want to talk about.
I just looked at your June 4th Museum link. Apparently the government is accusing it of being an unlicensed “place of public entertainment’. I would really like to know what they find so entertaining about the brutal massacre of hundreds of innocent young people.
Again, incisive comments. Bravo.
@ Low Profile — My sentiments exactly, except I’d add that hundreds — if not thousands — of older people were killed to from what I read since the massacre was not confined to students!
Many years ago, a taxi driver in Sydney told me that he was one of the students in Tiananmen Square. He said 4 people next to him were gunned down. He had vowed never to set foot in China again.
@Onecyst
OK, that’s four. Has anyone else got any hardish data they’d like to throw in to the mix – In the meantime, I’ll set up an Excel spreadsheet, plus I’ll see if I can track down the Count from Sesame Street (in this video, he shows us how to count to four, so for the time being we are covered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoxCkySv34&ab_channel=SesameStreet).
@YTSL – “The Poeple’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited” could be borrowed from HK Library in December 2020. Now it is listed as a reference book and can no longer be taken out on loan. How much longer before it disappears completely?