Some days in Hong Kong are Orwellian; others are more Kafkaesque. Yesterday was one of the latter.
Schoolchildren in Plot to Blow Up MTR Stations. Police display plastic bags containing cash, BB guns and walkie-talkies (the sort of toy guns and walkie-talkies used by annoying teenage cosplay-soldiers in country parks). Also, Guy Fawkes masks and coffee filters. The cops say they found ingredients for making TATP – a peroxide-acetone mixture plus an acid. As pointed out here, this could mean hair bleach, nail polish remover and toilet cleaner.
Look – maybe there really is such a plot, with a ’revolutionary group’ and its $10,000 in sinister ‘foreign currencies’. It’s just that after the last four, five or whatever ‘bomb factories’ and other such contrived-looking alarms since 2019 (plus real MTR atrocities in Yuen Long and Prince Edward), people are jaded and skeptical. Especially when we have senior officials ranting things like…
Mourners for attackers will become terrorists. Security Secretary Chris Tang even hints at arresting an academic who analyzed the Sogo flower-laying as ‘sympathy for someone who died or to register discontent with the government’. No-one expects cops-turned-cabinet secretaries to be nuanced or subtle when others contradict their line on National Security-threatening Terrorist Violence Mayhem, but it’s starting to feel like we’re headed towards criminalization of views that don’t echo the ‘heroic police/security state’ line. And there are those credibility-sapping frantic HK Police outta control hashtagging tweets. And then…
Carrie Lam says ‘ideologies’ threaten Hong Kong’s youth. (Oh for the days when it was ‘Hey Kids – Say No to Drugs’!)
Government departments “shouldn’t allow illegal ideas to filter through to the public through education, broadcasting, arts and culture, beautifying violence and clouding the conscience of the public,” Lam said.
“I also call on parents, principals, teachers, and even pastors to observe acts of teenagers around them. If some teens are found to be committing illegal acts, they must be reported.”
Not creepy at all! Among today’s list of pro-democracy bodies disbanding to avoid being rounded up for thought-crimes: an alliance of protesters’ parents, HK Psychologists Concern, and a group of actuaries.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/06/hong-kong-american-lawyer-prison/?fbclid=IwAR3sJZUc9aEy0L6Reb8NjqHVOnBF4f1Td3rxummDnl4oVuqcggaihC67Lvk
This is exactly why no one on the mainland will lift a finger to help a child that’s been run over several times by vehicles…why no one intervenes when a purse is snatched from a granny…why no one gives a damn about their neighbourhood other than the 2-3 feet in front of their door. The HK government is now actively teaching lessons in how to be more mainland-like with non ownership in civic pride or interaction.
Nothing to see here…move on.
No mourning. Ok, understood.
https://youtu.be/hJyYcieWoN0
This morning there are swarms of PTU mofos occupying street corners of CWB, including the corner of the Sogo Martyr, wearing the latest-fashion anti-knife vests. Personally I would feel much safer if they weren’t there.
During the Umbrella Revolution of 2013 there was a popular saying: the popo are not the enemy. How times have changed.
This place has become sadly tragic & pathetic. Every single day, without fail another Big Brother event.
Soon it will be illegal to deny that you are not being affected by the NSL.
I have just discovered hair bleach, nail polish remover and toilet cleaner in my bathroom. Clearly my teenagers are planning to either turn my flat into a bomb-making factory to destroy Hong Kong even more effectively than the Administration/CCP is, or they are planning to enhancing their personal grooming and do some housework. Obviously the former. So in full accordance with the NSL, I therefore plan to turn them in to the NatSec Police when I get back from the pub. And the missus, too, for good measure. And once I get my JP for these comradely actions, I’ll be able to visit them in prison.
Note to plainclothes police standing around inconspicuously while daydreaming about having hotpot in Shenzhen: could you try to be a little more wooden. It’s embarrassing.
Yes let us report our own children to the HK police, what is next, send granny to jail?
@Big Al: It’s obvious that you never clean your own toilet, otherwise the risk of self-incrimination would have occurred to you.
Joking aside, any authoritarian regime, when met with a creative and obstinate public, will find itself banning increasingly absurd things. Jogging (Burundi). Eating sandwiches with ill intent (Thailand). And of course, Winnie the Pooh.
“Note to plainclothes police standing around inconspicuously while daydreaming about having hotpot in Shenzhen: could you try to be a little more wooden. It’s embarrassing.”
Never thought I would share something in common with a knuckle dragging thug.
Surely they can have it in HK or is it just “safer” for them in Shenzhen due to the hero treatment?
I too frequently dream of hotpot though I prefer having it in HK. Shenzhen hotpot and food is good though, but with the border closed, it’s just more practical to eat in HK.
RE: plainclothes police, there’s a familiar chap I see most mornings on the platform at Lai King MTR station, sitting on the same seat on the same bench, whilst pretending not to take a keen interest in who gets on and off the train. True, I suppose that I don’t KNOW that he’s a copper, but what else could he be doing? Maybe he’s a creature of habit and just really likes that bench, or something? Remember; if it swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a popo.
Aflame, wrought up
(Terrorist!)
He stabbed a cop.
(They hissed.)
By passion possessed
(Terrorist!)
Stabbed his own chest.
(They hissed.)
Pitiful, horrid
(Terrorist!)
And I am sorry.
(They hissed.)
In a dark hour
(They hissed.)
I laid a flower.
(Terrorist!)
With their increasingly bizarre public pronouncements the twp over-promoted Mr Plods have clearly found the same Drink Me bottle as She Who Must Obey. Rev Charles Dodgson would find it a challenge to outdo our Wonderland.
As the old saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s hero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeung_Kwong
Following quote is linked to Mr. Yeung Kwong, holder of the Grand Bauhinia Medal:
“It is not a matter of who encouraged this kind of action [bomb attacks]. Oppression will result in popular revolt,” Yeung responded, also replying that deaths and injuries were inevitable in the struggle when asked if he felt sorry for the victims.