Consistent sentencing guidelines were never the Hong Kong judiciary’s strong point. And then came the NatSec era. Now you get three months in prison for stabbing Long Hair, but nine years for stabbing Junius Ho. Simple explanation: in majority pro-democracy Hong Kong, pro-Beijing people are relatively scarce and have ‘endangered species’ protected status.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam voices embarrassingly fulsome approval for Beijing’s whiny fact sheet on ‘US Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China, Destabilizing Forces’. Among examples of dastardly American intrusion into domestic matters: putting electric candles in the consulate’s windows.
Which brings us to Security Secretary PK Tang, who says that commemorating the Tiananmen massacre may or may not be legal, depending on factors. The interesting thing here is the wording (from RTHK)…
…authorities would take into consideration a number of factors when judging whether it is legal for people to commemorate the ending of the student-led protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, but stressed that they could not attempt to overturn the government.
‘Ending of the student-led protests’ is a new euphemism – to be used by those who find ‘clearing the square’ too icky. (And how exactly do people holding vigils ‘attempt to overturn the government’?)
Tang was speaking after the Hong Kong Alliance formally disbanded. Stand News presents a list of 49 civil society organizations – mainly unions and protest groups – that have ceased to exist in the last nine months.
Chris PK Tang also says December’s Legislative Council elections pose a higher risk of violence, mayhem, carnage, terrorism, etc than the recent Election Committee polls, because there will be more voters. It took 5,000 valiant cops to ensure a peaceful election for the 4,380 voters in the EC ‘election’. If we scale that up, we will need maybe a million cops in December (plus three years to count all the ballots). However, that assumes people bother turning out to vote in rigged and pointless pseudo-polls. December is a nice time to go hiking and picnicking. It may be the authorities will need just one van of cops, plus 10 minutes to do the counting.
On the subject of counting ballots (if any) in December: the civil servants who oversee the process will have to undergo political screening to ensure ‘absolute loyalty’. To whom? Why – to the winners, of course!
Remember in the good old BeforeDays when every year that polling organization (I forget already – HKU?) would state, for example, 100k at a Jun 4 commemoration and the CCPopo would counter with 20k?
Can’t wait to see some numbers of upcoming events…”National” Day celebration event, perhaps… where the pollsters say 20k and the CCPopo counter with 200k.
But then again, has that pollster been deemed detrimental to NatSec yet and self shut down??
Not that I am here to encourage the mainland authorities or to offer support for China, but does anyone in their propaganda department ever stop to consider that when these authorities insist on calling these very minor and somewhat impotent actions “destabilising” that it only really nurtures the idea that China is really weak and very insecure? That it’s inherently unstable?
Erick Tsang says that polling officers in the upcoming Legislative Council elections will have to undergo political screening to ensure “absolute loyalty”. – RTHK
He has said, or implied, something scandalous: that some civil servants might tamper with the votes.
@donkey: I think the point is to rile up domestic audiences against real and imagined threats as a means of enforcing conformity. Paranoia, not confidence, best serves the interests of authoritarians.
Not unlike how religious fanatics invariably insist that having the wrong kind of sex is a mortal threat to God.