Any plans for a quick trip out of Hong Kong in the next few months go out the window as the ‘next round’ of hotel quarantine – Nov/Dec/Jan – seems set to go ahead. The government might also plug the loophole allowing unvaccinated Mainlanders entry. The outcry over this is a good example of how people have been conditioned to accept (in this case, demand) Covid idiocy: wouldn’t it make more sense to demand that everyone from across the world be treated the same way as the Mainlanders?
What have I missed while gorging on kimchi and whining about Covid tests and form-filling at the airport, and cold baked beans in quarantine? Su Xinqi on the flimsiness of Chow Hang-tung’s ‘incitement to subversion’ charge. Lorie Lai’s mitigation (cut short by judge).
The latest sedition/subversion news here, here and here. (Also from HKFP, an op-ed on lengthy pre-trial detentions.) The Department of Justice uses taxpayers’ money to pursue convictions for the most trivial cases. And the Hong Kong movie industry body warns members against attending the Golden Horse Awards because…
‘Taiwanese directors or artists have repeatedly made comments that are unrelated to films, which has mixed politics into films and tainted the independent artistry of films’.
By ‘artistry’ (‘independent’, indeed), we mean making movies that satisfy Mainland censors. It is an art, I guess.
And then there is that street protest by thousands of Hongkongers against the current authorities, up at the British Consulate, showing their usual ingenuity by paying respects to a distant alternative leadership figure. Much as others once mourned Hu Yaobang.
Could this provide a template for more such Cap-599-evading subversive gatherings? There are many elderly US leaders whose time might come quite soon…
In regards to the retrial of the social worker, it is informative and instructive. The HK DoJ is determined to have a 99.9% success rate in convictions so as to keep up with the great and mighty prosecution teams on the mainland. Any defeat will be retried and/or appealed until the Government gets its “win”.