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Hong Kong Independence Rally @ Tamar Park – 5 August, 2016

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2016/Hong-Kong-Independance-Rally/i-pdTjBwF

Hong Kong’s first rally overtly advocating independence from China was organised by the Hong Kong National Party as a protest following the Electoral Affairs Commission disqualification of several politicians on the basis of their policies. Democracy in Hong Kong is under serious threat as those candidates not prepared to toe the Beijing party line find the September election of Legislative Council members will go ahead without them as they have been excluded by the EAC from the ballot.
Click on any photo for more images of the rally
Photos: Jayne Russell

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2016/Hong-Kong-Independance-Rally/i-GPR44xr

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2016/Hong-Kong-Independance-Rally/i-Fj2HK4D

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2016/Hong-Kong-Independance-Rally/i-FVzDnDn

Police Selectively Turning Their Back on Crime?

These days, it is almost a cliche to describe the Hong Kong Police as turning their backs on crime to fulfil political, guard duties for CY Leung’s government. But that’s what they were doing last night on Sai Yeung Choi Street.

The back story to what now takes place almost every Saturday, Sunday and public holiday evening in Mongkok looks like this. A group of ‘aunties’ supported by a motley crew of late, middle-aged men congregate to sing and dance to Mainland songs. Regular patrons of Sai Yeung Choi Street have various problems with this newly introduced behaviour.

Firstly, these groups take over the whole street with their dancing and extremely loud music, and if anyone dares to challenge them to turn it down, then they are met with hostile reactions. This kind of behaviour is exasperated when you speak to local musicians who have been playing in Sai Yeung Choi for years.

I have been speaking with these musicians, and they all said that they feel marginalised by the introduction of the Mainland dancing aunties onto the Street. They told me, “those aunties complain that our music is too loud, and the authorities make us turn ours down. But when we complain about their loud music or aggressive behaviour nothing happens, the authorities turn a blind eye.” All of the local musicians lamented that it appears the aunties have the protection of some powerful people and so act with aggressive impunity towards anyone who dares to challenge them. Many were in agreement that there seems to be a concerted effort to introduce this reddest of red communist past time to Hong Kong streets, regardless of the consequences for the local culture. So, while the local artists find themselves being pushed back, the revolutionary aunties and their admirers have expanded.

That was until the Localist groups took an interest in the musician’s plight. With an ability to regularly mobilise 2-300 protesters at any time, Localist groups now have a proven track record of being able to capture the media attention on any topic of their choosing. They revealed to the world the long-suffering difficulties of local communities overrun with swarms of smugglers and the stark contradictions in the government’s policies on street hawkers. The dancing aunties have now become another hotly debated topic that most people know almost nothing about.

For the Localists, the dancing aunties are an alien, cultural invasion that degrades local identity and introduces an unwelcome glorification of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into Hong Kong. On top of this and most importantly, what the aunties are doing is illegal. The agreed format for performers on Sai Yeung Choi Street is that space is allotted upon a first come first serve basis. Anyone can perform, but without a license it is illegal to take money from the public. The dark principle behind the aunty’s shows is that the ladies in attendance sing and dance for money, which they receive via red-packets. It’s a form of ‘soft-prostitution’, as the aunties let the men ‘get close’ and they receive hard cash as a reward. The tone and the vibe of the songs may be politically supportive of the Mainland and CCP. But, in essence, this is a monetary transactional relationship, heavily tainted with sexual undertones, taking place on a street allocated for performers. Making it illegal.

To be clear, offering any form of sexual favours on a one-tone basis is not illegal in Hong Kong, but when there is more than one girl involved in the process, then it is. The loop-hole behind this is that there are many single-girl-brothels all over the territory, or when you go to Wanchai, you don’t pay for girls, you pay for expensive drinks. On Sai Yeung Choi Street what is flirting with illegality is bringing groups of dancing, singing-girls together to exchange money for sexually charged encounters. Let’s be clear, no one is having sex on the street, but the men are paying, and the aunty’s are letting them have a feel while dancing. It is undeniably a sexual transaction.

There are many investigative reports on these encounters where old men openly admit spending all of their money on the ‘pretty girls.’ (side note, these women are not pretty). In one such investigation, a video shows singers receiving numerous red-packets from men in Tuen Mun. This accusation of accepting cash for sexual favours and breaking laws covering prostitution is in reality hard to pin unequivocally upon the aunties. But what is clear is that they are taking the money while performing on the street, this is fact and is unquestionably breaking the law. (See pics of tweets of the girls accepting money).

Citizens have filed complaints about this practice. But rather than mobilize the FEHD to investigate, the Mongkok police have instead mobilised its PTU to ensure whatever the aunties are doing, illegal or not, continues unfettered. Presumably under some mistaken notion of protecting freedom of expression and the right to assembly.
So the question arises, in a city where a man fixing people’s bikes for free and taking $10 to cover the cost of parts can be hauled up in front of the magistrate for illegal hawking. Why are the FEHD not investigating and police turning their backs while aunties receive hundreds of dollars a night for offering old men soft-prostitution services on the street in plain sight?

The obvious retorts to this question are that the police are not aware of what is going on. However, this hear-no-evil, see-no-evil approach to law enforcement simply doesn’t hold up in reality. On Sunday night, HK Frontline Media easily took photographs of the aunties receiving payment while a horde of police stood just one metre away.
In plain sight money was changing hands while the police focused all of their attention on the much-vilified Localists who were, in fact, not breaking any laws by being there. If the police turned just one of their cameras on the aunties, they would quickly capture the illegal behaviour everyone is complaining about and just like the friendly bike-mender they would be up in front of a magistrate.

You may then argue, well it isn’t the responsibility of the police to micro manage street performers, this is the job of the FEHD. Yet, I have also witnessed the police closing down would-be buskers within minutes because they tried to collect money. So the police are not blind to what’s happening on Sai Yeung Choi Street. Instead, the only conclusion one can make is they are selectively enforcing the law depending upon who is in favour. Someone up on high has dictated that the aunties are patriotic and therefore they will stay! Regardless of how many police need to be mobilised to protect them and how much evidence there is to show them repeatedly breaking the laws covering street performance.

With the police only motivated to throw more PTU at the street performer’s impasse and the FEHD nowhere to be seen, what may you ask are the Localists plans for the aunties? Their strategy is very succinct. For them, the anti-aunty campaign is a low-cost, economic attack upon the aunties, with the broader goal of keeping the topic of Mailandisation of Hong Kong in the media. Between the groups, the cost of the protests is low. They expend little effort either in manpower or risking arrests, yet eventually they believe they can financially cripple the aunties money channels. The aunties will stop singing on Sai Yeung Choi Street if they don’t get paid, and the old men will stop paying if they don’t get to dance and sexually embrace the aunties. Every day the aunties don’t dance is a victory. The protests are a classic guerrilla tactic that closely mirrors such direct action groups like Sea Shepherd. Who know they can’t match the Japanese Whaling operation dollar for dollar, but they can block it at every turn, making it financially unviable to continue in the long term.

So, rather than being irrelevant bickering over music tastes, the aunty protests show us that Localist protests are not being driven by an irrational hatred of Mainlanders. Instead, they bring into sharp focus the favouring of a policy of Mainlandisation by CY Leung’s Government. The policy is chipping away at Hong Kong’s sophisticated, local culture and works only to the detriment of Hong Kong’s once proud police force and its impartial rule of law.

Police Ramp Up Scare/Intimidation Tactics!

Where are HK Police getting their strategy plans from? Could it be the People's Armed Police and their Tibetan strategy? — Where are HK Police getting their strategy plans from? Could it be the People’s Armed Police and their Tibetan strategy?

The Hong Kong Police really are showing that they come from the Tibet/Xinjiang school of policing now rather than any sensible rational approach. The top brass at HKPF have met and are now sending out what they think is a ‘scary’ message that groups of just three people could be arrested for public disorder offences. Plus, if that doesn’t scare people enough, they’ll bring out the big-bad, anti-terrorist PTU teams again.

YAWN!

This new draconian approach will change nothing in Hong Kong politically other than to highlight more of the contradictions and fractures within society.

The police neither have the ability or the judgement to discern fairly who represents a public order nuisance and who doesn’t. Gangs of violent, Blue Ribbons, will still roam free while the police target people based on the assumption that they oppose the government politically. This will be their only mandate for implementing these new measures or,

Are you a young person, that sympathises with the new wave of political protest in Hong Kong? If yes, proceed to intimidation, arrest and physical violence if required.

Religious festival in Amdo, Tibet. If Andy Tsang and CY get their way, is this what protests in Hong Kong will look like?

This is political persecution at its finest. Young HongKongers are now on the same par as Tibetans or Uighurs within the Great, Chinese Motherland; unable to raise their voice without facing overwhelming intimidation from the security forces.

After all, the police don’t need this new law to stop people from kicking over carts or acting violently. They can arrest people for this type of action whenever they see it. We do have extensive criminal laws and fairly impartial Courts in Hong Kong! But alas, these really don’t function too well when you’re in the business of political persecution.

Instead, just like during Occupy, Andy Tsang is formulating police strategy based on quelling a popular, political message that is in opposition to a malign government. It never works Andy, stop masturbating over all the weapons and gear you think you need and read some real history for once. What kind of path are you walking on when you now choose the same style of policing as Lhasa or Urumqi?

The sad fact is that these types of measures are only ever enacted by the most embattled of illegitimate governments protected by deranged and out of touch police forces in order to scare people off the streets. Or, screw the lid down tighter, allow no form of dissent and let’s carry on as though everything is ok. More popular outrage can only be met with more oppression.

The reality is that Hong Kong has a goon police force that has doubled down on a goon government and the people are not scared any more. The more force the goon government orders, the more powerful Hong Kong people get.

So, bring your draconian laws and your elite PTU, it only makes the people stronger and the government weaker!

As Albert Camus said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Why the Secrecy?

Obfuscation and non-answers cast doubt on honesty and truthfulness. So why the secrecy? If the opinion poll is accurate and CY Leung is happy enough with it to quote the results and use it to justify his policies… Why won’t the government publish details of poll it says shows majority of public back its universal suffrage proposal?

In Legco Frederick Fung wanted to know why and asked the following questions. He received a written non-reply by the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, Mr Raymond Tam, in the Legislative Council on March 18:

Question:
It has been reported that on February 28 this year, the Chief Executive (CE) told reporters that the results of a public opinion survey recently commissioned by the Government showed that more than half of Hong Kong people were agreeable to the selection of CE by universal suffrage in 2017 to be implemented in accordance with the Decision made by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on August 31 last year on issues such as the selection of CE of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by universal suffrage. Yet, he did not provide any details of the public opinion survey. Some members of the public have complained to me that the Government has recently disseminated results of public opinion surveys to the media in a selective or incomprehensive manner from time to time, making it difficult for them to judge the credibility of such survey results. They also query that the employment of such a practice by the Government was an attempt to manipulate public opinion. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(1) of the details of the aforesaid public opinion survey regarding (i) the organisation commissioned to conduct the survey, (ii) the content of the questionnaire, (iii) the method and form of the survey, (iv) the number of respondents and the response rate, (v) the distribution of age, gender and political attitude of the respondents, (vi) the raw data, and (vii) the analytical results of the survey data;

(2) whether it has assessed the consequences of CE selectively disseminating a particular result of the aforesaid public opinion survey, including whether it has resulted in the credibility of the survey results being questioned and the Government being accused of manipulating public opinion; if it has not assessed, of the reasons for that; and

(3) whether it will consider disclosing concomitantly the relevant details when it disseminates the results of Government-commissioned public opinion surveys in future; if it will not, of the reasons for that?

Reply:
President,
In consultation with the Chief Executive’s Office and the Central Policy Unit (CPU), our reply to the questions raised by Hon Fung is as follows.

The opinion poll which the Chief Executive referred to on February 28 was conducted by a professional agency commissioned by the CPU. The CPU commissions professional research agencies to conduct opinion polls on major social, economic and political issues from time to time. Such polls are for Government’s internal reference only, and relevant details are generally not made public.

link to the official Lego release http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201503/18/P201503170712.htm

Professional Groups Publish Advert Protesting the Government’s “Abuse” of TV API’s to Push it’s Political Agenda

These five professional groups Frontline Tech Workers前線科技人員議政小組, Médecin Inspirés 杏林覺醒, Progressive Lawyers Group 法政匯思, Progressive Teachers’ Alliance 進步教師同盟, Reclaiming Social Work Movement 社工復興運動 took out and advert to protest about the government’s abuse of the television “Announcements in the Public Interest” (API’s) program to promote the governments position on political reform.

The text of the advert reads:

Joint Statement on the Government’s Misuse of Announcements of Public Interest

1. The broadcasting of political advertisements is unlawful in Hong Kong. A broadcaster was penalised for carrying advertisements advocating universal suffrage as part of the 2010 electoral reform process.

2. The Government requires radio and television broadcasters to broadcast “Announcements in the Public Interest” (“APIs”) for free. Typical APIs include messages such as those involving public health, road safety or weather information like a typhoon or rainstorm.

3. In recent months, the Government has required radio and television broadcasters to air the following advertisements without payment as if they were APIs:
(a) “有票，真係唔要” (Your Vote, Don’t Cast it Away!) from 7 August 2014;
(b) “有票，梗係要” (Your Vote, Gotta Have It!) from 2 September 2014; and
(c) “2017 機不可失” (2017, Seize the Opportunity) from 10 January 2015.

4. These advertisements are different from APIs. They carry a strong bias to advance the Government’s political position on electoral reform, to the exclusion to any other position. They are neither factual nor educational. These advertisements are no different from the unlawful political advertisements referred to above.

5. As such, these advertisements are not APIs. They are unlawful political advertisements which cannot be broadcast on radio or television. The Government’s unlawful abuse of its exclusive powers to broadcast APIs has also unjustly distorted the public debate on electoral reform.

6. We therefore condemn the Government’s broadcast of political advertisements under the guise of APIs. It must cease doing so immediately. To continue do so is not only unlawful, but also hypocritical in light of the Government’s recent repeated insistence upon “acting in accordance with the law”.

Frontline Tech Workers前線科技人員議政小組
Médecin Inspirés 杏林覺醒
Progressive Lawyers Group 法政匯思
Progressive Teachers’ Alliance 進步教師同盟
Reclaiming Social Work Movement 社工復興運動

Three More Corrupt Hong Kong police!!

Hong Kong’s Finest – Not!!! – These three Hong Kong policemen framed innocent people
The 3 cops tried to frame ‘the protesters’ in Mongkok. Said they were assaulted by the protesters but in fact they just picked on innocent people. The defending lawyer pointed out that the evidences given are controversial. One of the cops even admitted he has given false statements 14 times before and had been disciplined for falsifying reports.

The days of being hailed as Asia’s finest as sadly long gone.

And it is sad!

We Will Be Back – When?

Definitions:
Peaceful – not involving violence or force
Radical – favouring drastic political, economic, or social reforms
Fanatical – filled with excessive and single-minded zeal.

The big question is, have Hong Kong’s protests become more radical? The simple answer, by looking at a photograph of September 28th is categorically NO.

We can see there is a significant proportion of people who are engaging in what some would describe as radical actions, or, putting pressure on the police to remove the political line they are holding and let the masses assemble outside their government to protest.

Behind them we can see a throng of so called peaceful protesters, or those, that wouldn’t dream of confronting the police, but wish to register their political discontent in a way that is absent of violence or force.

Here, the police line is described as fanatical, or overly excessive and single minded. This is an inarguable description of them. It was overly excessive of them to fire 87 rounds of tear gas and walk upon the streets of Hong Kong with automatic weapons. Their single mindedness to pursue a plan of intimidation without giving much thought to other possible outcomes, shows without doubt their fanaticism.

To this day, nothing much has really changed in the make-up of the groups. some radical protesters have behaved badly, mainly due to lack of leadership. Some police have behaved badly, mainly due to lack of leadership.

The only significant thing that has changed is that the peaceful protesters packed up and went home after the 79day Occupy and have not come back out again on a regular basis.

Why is this?
Maybe it’s for fear of being accused of being a radical or being scared of being abused by the fanaticals. Who can say?

But when the Occupy ended, everyone revelled in the new motto, “We’ll be back.”
Well, when is that?

If you truly want to create change you need to do it regularly, every week. Not every third Tuesday in a month when the moon is blue.

There isn’t going to be another Occupy, the fanaticals are now too violent to let you settle in anyone place ever again. But this doesn’t mean that every weekend you can’t peacefully show your discontent in huge numbers. Being too scared to protest for fear of being accused of being radical didn’t bother anyone on 28th September, so why should it now?

If the police are to be believed, they fired the first canisters of tear gas because of the radical actions on the frontline, the Umbrella Movement, is born from radical action and made powerful by peaceful protests.

The radicals are still out there!
The fanatics are still out there!
Where are peaceful protesters?

So, the Inevitable Finally Happened on Sunday

So, the inevitable finally happened on Sunday:

The protests quickly and effectively switched locations and completely wronged stepped the police and any blue ribbon surprises that were set for them in Sheung Shui.

Protesting in Hong Kong will never be the same again.

Tens of thousands of marchers carrying out meaningless walkathons along Hong Kong Island have yielded no results since the Article 23 March. The government is immune to the people’s voice, it only cares what directives it receives from Beijing. But in the space of two months about 500 people have managed to shake up HK politics right up to the very top. Not only have they yanked our aloof ruler’s balls, they are well on their way to achieving real results. For sure the protests can get a little ugly around the edges, but protests are supposed to shake society out of its stupor. Protests are not about showing your face and hoping some other faceless person might then be motivated to sort out the problem some other day. If leaders don’t pay attention to your protests, then they’re not to blame, it means your way of protesting is not effective and needs to be reassessed.

I have watched these protests for hours and have pointed out many times, when the police aren’t there in force, the protests carry on relatively peacefully. Of course, there are minor skirmishes on the peripheries, but this is symptom of the fractured nature of society, it’s certainly not indicative of the violent nature of the groups.

With this in mind, the protesters have flaunted with trying to lose the police, because without doubt, large amounts of police quickly lead to batons out and indiscriminate pepper spraying.

In the first Tuen Mun protest the crowd experimented with being highly mobile and ‘like water.’ On this occasion, protesters visited many smuggler shops where the police presence was minimal and nothing happened. It was only when the police finally caught up with the protesters that they caused a shit-show.

Again, in both Shatin and Yuen Long, the police had ample time to prepare and set their boundaries, which the protesters would inevitably cross, causing more needless violence.
By the time of the Sheung Shui protest, it was already on the cards that a switch could happen from the very get-go. The problem was,
a) There was no leader of the protest. Both Civic Passion and HK Indigenous were not attending the protests in any official capacity
b) It had never been tried before, so would people change?

There was no official command to switch to Tuen Mun, it was all via word of mouth and through small social media networks. As we jumped into a taxi to head to Tuen Mun, we had no clue whether we would find any protesters at all. When we arrived at the Tuen Mun MTR exit there were about 25 protesters milling about. This slowly grew to about 50. After being in Tuen Mun for about 30minutes a lone police car drove up to the station, obviously to check out if the rumours were true. They didn’t get out. By the time we left the MTR the protest was about 150 strong and growing quickly. As we made our way into the first of three shopping centres, the protest was well over 200 people and trailed by about seven highly stressed police. Other than a few shouting matches and the odd box knocked over the protests paraded all the way through Tuen Mun town unfettered by the police.

Tuen Mun belonged to the protesters, there were no police in any number to control them. What did they choose to do with this freedom? They roamed around and shouted a bit, getting lots of attention but there was no out right violence.

Of, course, then the police arrived. We can only guess that they had been transported from Sheung Shui. This seems a reasonable guess, because when they piled out of the vans they all ran pell-mell into Trend Plaza, the scene of the confrontation during the first Tuen Mun protests. The problem was, there were no protesters in Trend Plaza, they were all in VCity. The police then realising that there was no one to contain filed out of the mall and congregated on the street. They had no clue where the protesters were. I can guess this, because neither did we. There were now about 100 police officers outside Trend Plaza. They looked pissed off and I tweeted that they would want to take out their frustration on the protesters if given the chance. They’d been effectively humiliated. So much for police intelligence!

We went off to find the protesters and left the police on the street. By the time we found them they were making their away along the footbridge to Trend Plaza from VCity. This would mark the first time the bulk of the protesters would come up against the bulk of the police. By this time, the protesters had already adopted a fairly new tactic, where wherever the police showed force, they moved away and kept moving. This meant that the police were always playing catch-up and were never able to formulate some kind of containment plan which invariably leads to a hyping up of tensions.

This went on for an hour or so, and I truly believe that the protesters were getting bored and were actually considering finishing as they were just 100m from the MTR station when they were abused multiple times by several blue ribbons. This gave the police enough reason to attack the crowd and you can see from the video I posted on my timeline, the police literally had to run after the protesters to make their presence felt and make some random arrests. This gave the media enough footage to make the protests look dangerous and out of control.

At this stage in the day, I think, if those needless arrests hadn’t happened, people may have been willing to call it a night and go home. But suddenly everyone was motivated again not to be intimidated and the call out to relocate to TST suddenly seemed like a good idea. So, the long journey from Tuen Mun to TST began.
Just like in Tuen Mun, when we arrived, we had no clue if people there were tourists or protesters. The police by this point had picked up on the switch to TST. Not because their intelligence is particularly good, but because it was plastered all over Facebook. The police had had time to make a plan of sorts, which failed at almost every turn and their ultimate goal of not letting the protesters leave the Star Ferry area collapsed quickly.

As the people found a gap in the police net and streamed through, there were about 200 protesters free roaming around TST with the 60 or so officers left at Star Ferry quickly having to come up with something better. We walked all around TST before the officers caught us up and true to form, they created a kettle that congested up the one side of Nathan Road. About 30 random people were caught in the kettle including passersby. Once again the police had succeeded in creating tension where none was needed. A key factor that was happening though was the crowd that surrounded the kettle was now made up by about 20% people from Chung King Mansions. I commented to those around me, if the police increase the tension in this crowd they’ll get more than they bargained for. Unlike regular HK protesters, those in the crowd now would stand their ground and fight and would not be pushed around by highly strung, ill-trained coppers. I think the senior police realised this too, as they began to let everyone in the kettle go, they didn’t even ID them. So what was the point of the kettle?

As people got released from the kettle, the protesters fell back to right outside Chung King Mansions’ door. We were now a mix of protesters and international refugees, and all the police who had created the kettle just five minutes earlier just disappeared. Only a couple of black coats remained on the outer periphery of the group. What was the reason for their disappearance? I can’t say for sure, but I bet it’s because they knew if a jumpy officer sparked an incident it would spiral well out of their control very quickly. Certainly, the HKPF know a good thing when they see one and hog-tying young kids is easy sport compared to dealing with the growing crowd of people the who hang outside Chung King Mansions.

So, that was the day.

The take out is, the days of big police plans are out the window, the police are going to have to think up other ways to stifle protests outside of big containment plans utilising lots of angry officers.

For the protesters, they know first hand the benefits of mobility and as the protest numbers grow their Wild Cat nature will increase too. All of Hong Kong is now a protest site and why have one protest when you can have three or four!