In HKFP – Chow Hang-tung’s mitigation…
Believing that dictatorship is wrong and democracy is right – if that isn’t a belief, then what is? Even if the courts and the government attempt to claim, like a chanted mantra, that they are not judging beliefs, they cannot change the reality: under this judgment, anyone who believes in the principle of ‘ending one-party dictatorship’ has nowhere left to stand. In the eyes of this brand of ‘law’, holding such a thought inherently contravenes the Constitution – rendering it unlawful, an original sin. Even when we engage in entirely legitimate acts, such as commemorating June 4th, it becomes a crime simply because of the perceived ‘impropriety’ of our thoughts.
Yet the law cannot govern what a person thinks. Not only is it incapable of doing so, but when it openly defies the human conscience, it is the law itself that ultimately suffers – forfeiting its very legitimacy.
Via Brian Kerner, a description of what happened in court…
When she actually gave her mitigation statement in court, she was repeatedly interrupted by the judges who clearly felt uncomfortable with someone speaking like this in their courtroom. At first, one judge said that her words might be more appropriate for another setting. Apparently the judges thought she was attempting to relitigate the case. It got to the point where one judge asked directly, “So, you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, right?” Hang-tung replied, “I don’t think so.”…
…Hang-tung: “The trial has spread the message of ‘ending one-party rule’ in Hong Kong to the whole world. Originally, our voices weren’t so loud.’“
Judge, with a smile: “Then you should thank us, right?”
Hang-tung, also with a smile: “Yes, that’s right, thank you very much to the court.”
Judge: “Just kidding. We have handled the matter seriously.”
Hang-tung: “I said I shouldn’t sit in jail for even a day.”
It was then noted that Chow Hang-tung has already been remanded in custody for 1,404 days.
SBS on the fate of one activist after 2019…
At 21, Sam Chan Chi-sum was preparing to leave Hong Kong to continue his studies overseas.
Instead, he went to prison for nearly two years.
He’d been involved with a student activist group that collected sweets and toiletries to send to people jailed after Hong Kong’s 2019 anti-government protests.
Authorities accused the group of using the supplies to build support among prisoners and incite opposition to the government.
In September 2021, Sam was arrested under Hong Kong’s sweeping National Security Law, which had been passed a year earlier, and was convicted of “subversion with the intent of overthrowing the government”.
“Prison was awful. I shared a cell with around twenty people. At its most crowded, there could be forty of us,” he said.
“The pillows stank and the blankets were infested with cockroaches.”
Quoting ex-CFA judge Jonathan Sumption…
“I resigned early in June 2024 … because I felt that the outcome of that [HK 47] case showed that the judiciary in Hong Kong was not prepared to stand up to China,” he said.
“Hong Kong is becoming a totalitarian state because political dissent is no longer tolerated.”
The Too Simple, Sometimes Naive blog on how Nury Vittachi is funded…
Launched in 2021, [Friday Everyday] describes itself as an “independent” outlet and “not financed by Beijing”. It says it eschews “politically divisive issues” and instead wants: “zen journalism”.
Yet, if you’ve stumbled on them, it was probably through social media of … Nury Vittachi. Popular posts include: Tiananmen Square (“hoax”), the ‘Xinjiang genocide’ (“hoax”), and Iranian supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei (“cool”).
Most of the article is paywalled, so I’m not sure exactly who the ‘United Front cadres’ are – but hardly a shock to find out that such sources back Hong Kong’s contribution to the Anglosphere’s pro-Beijing/tanky grift ecosystem. Could they spare a few bucks to teach the guy how to pronounce Pinyin?
Reuters on Hong Kong’s latest book closure…
People queued on Sunday to chat, browse and bid farewell to an independent Hong Kong bookstore before it shut, following a July police raid over alleged seditious books and what the store owners said was a “poor business performance”.
Snaking lines formed outside the bookstore, Have a Nice Stay, stretching down the staircase in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Only 20 people at a time were allowed to enter the roughly 600 square-foot space.
The city’s once-flourishing independent bookstore industry has rapidly dwindled since Beijing imposed sweeping national security legislation on the city in 2020.
Many offered a broader range of political and social titles than mainstream retailers and became important spaces for civil society through book talks and workshops.
Also not paying for the blog, but I wonder if the name Neville Roy Singham is mentioned? Nury is certainly an eager sharer of his network’s content, and vice-versa (Singham is the guy who does all the stuff the American right thinks Soros does, and far worse…)
Last year I was added to a WhatsApp group for musicians in Hong Kong. As soon as I saw that Vittachi was a member, I left. He is insufferable and so are his songs.
Vittachi is nothing more than a 2 bit grifter barely scraping by. I bet he is miserable in the new Hong Kong despite his public enthusiasm. He had much happier times when he worked at SCMP.
@Tone Deaf – I know the group of which you speak, but I’m still a member. I did do a double take at the name, but to be fair he hasn’t ever said much. Easy enough to ignore. The musicians in the group are talented.
Nearly Versace has always struggled with originality (as well as trying to be humorous) so it’s little surprise he’d be on the coattails rehashing content from a fellow grifter with a fetish for mass murderers.
@Mark Bradley – He might’ve been happy doing SCMP’s now long gone Lai See column in his pro-dem days, but it was a dire daily outpouring of bol*&x and unfunny af.
@ Din Dan Ch no argument from me on that!
Din Dan Che, but Nury’s book The Other Side of the Story was extremely original (and brave), and for all the sneering white identikit Penguin men (Bland, Dapiran, Cartledge) who pooh-poohed it for “not having references or footnotes”, it’s a solid account of 2019, from my direct experience. Anyone challenging the narrative of brave young youth peacefully standing up to the evil regime would of course be ridiculed. And I fully expected an attack on Nury this week, instrumental as he was in exposing the BBC’s China bullshit on the tragedy at the Nepal/Tibet border.
Anyway, you tiresome bunch, I consider Nury a friend, he’s a funny and generous soul IRL. I suspect half the irrational hatred comes from the latent racism of 60-year-old white men who cannot stand to see a brown fella succeed.
@Pal of Nury
Hey Nury why are you writing in the third person?
Since you have no rebuttal you go straight for personal attacks eh? I was in Hong Kong during the 2019 protests as were many other people here.
Nury whitewashed the criticism over the extradition bill. He claimed that the judiciary would have control of the extradition process which is completely untrue as the judiciary wouldn’t even have the opportunity to review the evidence of the criminal cases involved in the extradition and instead only had the opportunity to confirm whether or not procedures were correctly followed by the CE.
Nury’s claim that nobody he spoke to read the bill is laughable as it was easily accessible through the Legco website and many solicitors and barristers also had criticized the extradition bill precisely because it does not give the judiciary much leeway to block extraditions. Many of these criticisms from legal professionals happened BEFORE THE PROTESTS and they were arrogantly handwaved away by the Carrie Lam administration.
Nury in his book also asks us to take a leap of faith and just believe him and the HK government despite being completely unconvincing.
Your “friend” Nury is an unfunny hack and he sucks at writing books.
Can someone pls deconstruct and trash Adam Clermont’s painful tankie ravings in which he pretends that because he’s got a law degree (ooh ahh) his arguments have more validity and which are full of more whataboutism than an English 60’s comedy. It’s annoys me AF. I don’t have the energy. I’m hoping someone does. It’s odiously reminiscent of a lot of the stuff people who live here and go “the lights still turn on, my AC still works, I can still make my filthy lucre so it doesn’t matter that they’ve made a joke of the rule of law, made every previously elected body a weak clone of the people’s congress and have inherited the screechy propaganda tone of peak wolf warrior global times” crap I endless hear from business and legal types who long ago sold their souls.
@Boris – Do what they do and leverage the A.I. His cartoons are a prime example of a charlatan.
@Nury’s Pal – no one is banging on here about brave youth. It’s about a hack licking up to Putin’s tankie followers for puerile content masked as if it’s some kind of originality.