More on the UNHRC report

Mirror concert disasters – first this, then this – as metaphor for collapse of Hong Kong. The (hurriedly copy-edited) Standard quotes an expert in misfortune causing misfortune…

“Estimating the monitor weights 90 kilograms, and at 10-meter high, and if it hit the dancer with its corner, it will create 708 pounds of force, which we could not rule out causing the dancers to death.”

But he added that since the monitor first hit the ground, and then crushed the dancers like a chopper, the force created is only one-third of the estimated.

(The video footage seems to show the monitor landing straight on a dancer.)

Samuel Bickett reviews the UN Human Rights Committee’s surprisingly forthright criticism of Hong Kong. He thinks some of the report is a bit weak, but is generally impressed…

UNHRC called for the repeal of the NSL as incompatible with the ICCPR, which perhaps went further than many expected. It used strong language that puts the Hong Kong Government in an uncomfortable position. The ICCPR is not only written into Hong Kong law via the Bill of Rights, but it is also expressly incorporated into the National Security Law via Article 4, which states that the ICCPR’s rights shall be protected in accordance with the NSL. 

As he points out, the Hong Kong government felt it had to issue a relatively diplomatic press release…

There is little new in the statement, but note the difference between its polite rebuttals of the UNHRC versus its wolf-warrior-esque attacks on other critics like national governments, activists, and media … nothing close to the Hong Kong Government’s claim two weeks ago that the US Government “manifests its hegemonism by disseminating slanders and attempting to intimidate prosecutors of the HKSAR Government.”

See also the threads by Georgetown Law academics Eric Yan and Tom Kellogg.

Meanwhile, Ta Kung Pao comes for the lawyers. Will Justice Dept prosecutors have any qualms about eating their own learned friends? Will they foresee a time when the Beijing press turns on them? Presumably not.

More on the plans for a Hong Kong parliament-in-exile. As a practical matter, the logistics of electing such a body would be tricky, especially if the authorities threaten to prosecute anyone worldwide who participates. In terms of symbolism, it will drive certain people nuts. At best, the phrase ‘so-called’ would explode in government statements. At worst – who knows, maybe a ban on media even mentioning the thing?

On other matters…

How Hongkongers are making new lives – and becoming the ‘new Windrush generation’ – in the south London borough of Sutton. (Have other astute masochists noticed that every SCMP story on teachers’ and other emigration includes a cut-and-paste reference to some Hong Kong migrants in the UK having a bad time?)

Two academics examine how Beijing is using ‘discourse power’ in archaeology and history to establish a case for a ‘Chinese civilization’ dating back millennia and including non-Han cultures – Xindiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ding.