Draw, Create, Express yourselves freely!
Tim Mei Art Village is located in Admiralty on Tim Mei Avenue, next to ‘Democracy University Library’
Regular art meet-ups are scheduled every Sunday at 3pm, where everyone can express themselves through different types of art.
There are no charges for this, so please bring along any art supplies you may have, they will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your support!
Intent on causing trouble and strife with the protestors this man was eventually lead away by the police. As he was being lead away, he reached out and grabbed the breast of a young female demonstrator right infront of the eyes of the policeman force walking him away.
The policeman did nothing as the girl screamed, Having seen the sexual assault I shouted and harangued PTU Inspector Ng until she eventually deigned to investigate before releasing him. They did not arrest the man even with witnesses to the attack.
To avoid having to arrest the man, the police put heavy pressure on me not to make a statement, saying it would take 7 or 8 hours minimum at the station to make a witness statement. That there were no CID available to investigate the case, so they couldn’t arrest the man…
I was and still am, fully willing to make a statement about the assault – yet the police appear to have pressured the young lady into not filing a complaint, so they let the man go.
CY Leung – would you accept this man grabbing your daughter’s breast… didn’t think so. So why should another father have to? End selective policing now!
Video of the man, just before the assault
http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Umbrella-Movement-1-March-2015/47769167_vjZGZd#!i=3905047531&k=dsXpZxd
In recent months the police have been arresting and charging yellow ribbons for allegedly using the internet for ‘organising an illegal assembly. In screen shots of a facebook chat Wong Sau Yin CEO of Goldmine Properties in Yuen Long is seen offering $5000 cash for beating up ‘yellow ribbons’ heads until they bleed. Where is the police announcement that he has been arrested and charged?
The LoveTuenMun facebook page shared the screen shots of Wong Sau Yin, CEO of Goldentime Property Agency Ltd, private chat. The leaked chat is full of threatening content. Wong also admits to cooperating with some organizations in Guangzhou and to have hired thugs ready to beat the protesters’ brains out in any upcoming Yuen Long protest (probably on 1 March, 2015).
In a conversation with the admin from LoveTuenMun page, Wong requested to have these prints screens of his conversations deleted. The page admin demanded a public apology be made, but Mr Wong said he is ‘protected’ and rejected the idea. He confessed to be working with communists, being sent to do the brainwashing in Hong Kong.
The CCP must be loving this… using money (greed) to turn Hongkonger against Hongkonger while they suck the life and profits from our home.
http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Street-Eats-Mong-Kok-20/47615540_5N7f9J#!i=3889376520&k=Xn2PSdn
The only thing bigger than street hawkers this Lunar New Year has been Regina Ip being knocked for a six by a Kirin. Given this, we all have high hopes for the year of the goat and its new, feisty attitude of butting things it doesn’t like out of the way.
In regards to the hawkers, it doesn’t matter whether you agree with HK Indigenous’ actions to help relieve the impact of hawkers or not. That is not why they spent four nights cleaning the streets, Their goal was to get you talking about local issues. Or, how do local people solve local problems? Or Hong Kong people making decisions about Hong Kong’s future, just like the Basic Law once promised us, so long ago. This is their ultimate purpose. Media and online forums have been alight with the pros and cons of hawkers in the districts. Hundreds of people have come out to defend them and the Government has wasted vast quantities of money mobilising the FEHD and police to generally do nothing other than look like wannabe Mainland Chengguan and Gong An. (An ominous sign for the future.)
Regardless, of what the solution to hawkers is, the HK Indigenous operation, just like its smuggler campaign, was a huge media success. A handful of motivated young people entirely dictated what the media should be talking about this Lunar New Year, no easy feat. They don’t presuppose for a minute that they have the solutions, their goal is to empower local people to take their communities back. In order to do this they need to tackle problems that are both contentious and difficult to solve. In their choice of operations, they’re not looking for consensus and praise, rather debate and ultimately local empowerment.
They are the beginning of a grassroots revolution within Hong Kong, concentrating on local identity and local empowerment of civil society. It’s a direct push back from the top-down style government so favoured on the Mainland and now being rammed down our throats by CY’s oppressive and clumsy administration. It’s a backlash against the idea that, Hong Kong is part of the Mainland, therefore we need to start acting like Mainlanders. Instead, HK Indigenous and groups like them are directly tackling difficult issues to highlight that geographically, it may be correct, that we are part of Mainland China, but culturally we are very different and the qualities that distinguish this are worth retaining, defending and even fighting for.
The hawker issue will rumble on. The smugglers issue hasn’t gone away, and will be back very soon. No doubt these groups will propel other issues to the forefront very soon. The cumulative effect is that daily Hong Kong’s identity becomes more pronounced as its people get more courage to stand up for what they believe to be right.
As a westerner living in Hong Kong one of the first things you notice about the Hong Kong Cantonese is that they spend a lot of time shouting at each other. Often, what you think is a conflict is actually just two friends engaging in friendly banter about horses or Korean soap operas. That said, you don’t have to have lived here too long before you will encounter a real confrontation. Whatever the reason for the conflict, these situations quickly escalate into loud slanging matches, punctuated with elaborate verbal abuse and theatrical posturing. These conflicts almost never end in violence. Almost every westerner who witnesses these events for the first time thinks, “There’s no way I would let anyone shout at me like that, I would punch them in the face.”
And on the whole it’s true, westerners are much quicker to fight than Cantonese. Maybe it’s something to do with the Cantonese language being very colloquial and street-wise, who knows? But Cantonese really do enjoy verbally abusing each other where other nationalities would already be rolling in the dirt and fighting.
The Occupy protests amplified this penchant for verbal abuse into a mass movement. Battles over Lung Wo Road regularly saw more than 2000 people chanting abuse to the police but staying incredibly peaceful physically. I personally took a major role in convincing a few people not to load house bricks onto the road, so as to prevent the crowd from bloodbathing the police, who were at this point so cocky that they were running around beating people with no shields or helmets. Good sense won over, in that the Cantonese are really good at verbally abusing each other and don’t need actual violence to articulate and vent their views. Unfortunately this good sense hasn’t seeped down into the police who believe they have the right to Route One to violence because they are being shouted at by the protesters. In this, the police are stepping outside of the Cantonese social norm, in that tens of thousands of times a day, Cantonese hurl verbal rocks at each other, but 99% have the self restraint to not lash out into actual physical violence.
These days in heated confrontations with protesters the HKPF always bemoan, “We’re not doing anything international police wouldn’t do in a similar situation,” but the critical point they miss, is the Cantonese aren’t acting like international rioters. They’re acting like Cantonese. They know the rules of the game, which the police have forgotten, or choose to ignore. Instead They somehow feel they are apart from local culture and are justified in using violence because they’re police and should automatically deserve respect without earning it. This attitude is destroying Cantonese culture by introducing quick, physical violence as a way of resolving conflict. The Blue Ribbons have taken to this new way of conflict resolution like ducks to water. This represents a significant slide in the cultural values of the Hong Kong society and the police created it on October 3rd when they turned a blind eye to the triads causing chaos in Mongkok.
So, the reality is the Occupy Movement has been high on verbal violence and infinitesimally low on actual violence because the Cantonese culture regularly substitutes verbal violence for real violence to resolve conflict and express frustration.
With this in mind, we can see that the current redirection of the democracy movement from protests on the streets outside Legco to Direct Action in the districts has also manifested this engrained habit. Instead, the targets of verbal abuse has changed from the Government and the Police to smugglers and parallel traders.
I stood outside the 3BX Bus line in Tuen Mun for many hours on Sunday and the level of verbal violence that was being hurled was fairly substantial. Certainly, it is not something I would do, but I’m not Cantonese. Those hurling the abuse are not stupid and they are also not racists. I grew up in 1970/80s Birmingham, England, I know what racism is, and what was on display in Tuen Mun last Sunday was certainly not racism.
Instead it is a form of verbal violence against actions that people see as objectionable. If we’d have been in Europe, the protesters would have burnt the bus stop, the bus and probably routed the police out of town. But like I said, this is not the Cantonese style, Cantonese love shouting shit at each other and especially at things they don’t like.
Certainly, from a superficial level, watching the verbal barrage is not pretty and could be misconstrued as hateful racism, but if you are there you can quickly see that it is very specifically directed at a certain type of person carrying out a certain type of action. It is not based on anything the person can’t rectify very quickly. If a Mainlander was in the crowd, they would not be targeted carte blanche for their race or heritage. This is not to say, if they tried to defend the actions they wouldn’t receive a volley of abuse, but they could take part or silently observe without any fear of attack from the rabid crowd. This shows it’s much more sophisticated than racism. Try sticking a silent, black person in a group of European Neo Nazi racists and see if you get the same result.
This is the critical difference between the anti-Mainland sentiment in Hong Kong and say classic white, black racism in Europe or America. They are coming from completely different foundations. One is a temporary form of protest, or a new form of expression at the dissatisfaction towards our malign government. The other is coming from hatred based on ignorance, is long lasting and often incurable.
Given this, at this point, I have no fear that the democracy movement has been hijacked by racism, certainly a tiny minority may misunderstand what is going on. Definitely our malign government will try and exploit it for its own advantage, but the protestors are smart and savvy. They will use this current tactic while it is useful and discard it once it becomes a burden.
It may not be pretty, but revolutions never are. Some might argue that flirting with racism is playing with fire, but the protesters would argue back,
“We’re already fighting the Volcano.”
Why, when we have a malign government that failed to be moved by 79 days of Occupy have many highly motivated young people turned to combating smugglers?
Isn’t all this New Territories shenanigans just a side show to the main event which is political reform? Wouldn’t their efforts be best served outside Legco facing down the government they hate so much?
The answer to this question is a resounding NO!
Why?
Because all rules of the game have changed. In the eyes of the young people who make up these Direct Action Groups the Pan Democrats have been dallying with the government for 30 years and achieved all but nothing. For them, it’s an entirely new game and they are taking politics right back to the roots. Local politics for local people solving local issues. They are the masters of their own destiny now. Not distant politicians with political agendas that have been forged over decades. They know no-one is coming to save them. They know the force that they are fighting has enormous influence and resources, but they also know that real power lies within in the hearts and minds of the people.
Over the past few months these groups have been working to capture the hearts and minds of the residents of Sheung Shui and Tuen Mun. The currency they are dealing with is called empowerment. A community empowered to take charge of its destiny is a powerful force for change.
Admittedly, there are many in these areas that are still slow to catch up with their message and struggle to separate these groups out from Occupy, but the tide is turning. The people in these long suffering districts are slowly realising that they have the power to take their districts back. Certainly, they may not agree fully with the Direct Action Groups hardcore tactics, but they fully support their message.
These groups have taken it upon themselves to be the hammer that breaks down the door of local issues. They openly accept that the police are authorised, from the very top, to use whatever force is necessary to meet them, for they understand clearly that the harder the police hit them, the louder their message is amplified.
In the current climate, provoking the police is not difficult at all. Just being there is enough for the police to come out fighting and the trap is sprung. The media predictably jump all over it and their goal is achieved. For the Direct Action Groups the Tuen Mun operation was a complete success. Every news media organisation in Hong Kong now has the plight of these affected communities front and centre. This is all thanks to a small group of politically astute, hardcore protesters, non of whom are much older than 27. Using a delicate blend of cooperation and confrontation they have bought a festering, hidden sore of Hong Kong life into the spotlight and laid it bare for everyone to see and solve. The locals thank them for it.
But let’s be clear here, these maybe raw, high stakes protests, but they are in no way coarse or uncontrolled. It’s a highly calculated balancing act between knowing when to push and knowing when to yield. This they learnt in the cauldron of the Mongkok Occupy. On Sunday, they played the police like an old fiddle.
Just being there was enough to make the police go into hyper aggression mode once again. This doesn’t mean to say that they relish conflict, nor does it mean to say that every time a person is pepper sprayed or arrested the group members aren’t beside themselves with anger and anguish.
Instead, it’s an acute awareness that the police have long since set themselves up as a political arm of the government, therefore they are a legitimate political force to be manipulated at will. An amplifier as it were, which the groups turn on or off depending upon the timings for their message. No doubt the police will now be bringing all the sophisticated powers they have to monitor these new groups and curb them at every turn.
Just take a while to digest that. Civic groups set up specifically to encourage and support local issues and problems are now the focus of the police, as if they were terrorists or triads. Can there be any doubt that Hong Kong is being lead down the wrong path by malignant people?
This kind of Direct Action like we have witnessed in Tuen Mun and Tai Po, may not be your cup of tea. They are certainly not the main road to universal suffrage, but they are an essential part of it. While some say that Occupy lost public support, they have begun to win it back where it counts, in the districts.
You may never fully understand them but don’t shun them. Take the time to understand. Open your eyes to what’s going on around you, take you head out of the sand and take an interest in the place you call home. Whatever your view, remember their goal is the same – an open corruption free Hong Kong where everyone can enjoy societies benefits not just the privileged few.
The wide range of protest is a hopeful sign that a genuine shift in society is taking place.
www.facebook.com/hkindigenous
https://hkindig.wordpress.com/
Addendum: Tuen Mun resident Fran Wong posted this comment on facebook:
Fran Wong Thanks for your in-depth report. As a Tuen Mun resident, I fully support this action and thank the Direction Action groups for organizing this. Unfortunately, there are alot of local residents who still have some misconception or doubts about these local groups, and some even consider them as triads and radical losers in the society. The most disappointing is that alot of local mainstream media rarely report the conflicts between these local groups and the blue-ribbon groups, or any injustices took place in the local districts in the previous weeks. But from all the videos which went viral, it’s crystal clear that the government/ the police are targeting these local groups.
I have lived in Tuen Mun since I was born. Lots of the residents here could tolerate the long traveling time to the city centre, the frequent traffic jams on Tuen Mun Highways, and the juvenile problems in the early 90s. Yet, the ‘multi-entry permit’ has brought a great deal of disturbance to this residential area. What has the government done all these years? Nothing. Now, the situation has only become bad to worse. So, you’re right! Looking at all the problems in HK, when no one is coming to save us, we have to empower ourselves. Indeed, I was amazed to see the flexible tactics these local groups adopted on Sunday. But it was also sad and worrying to see the young kids being arrested and beaten up by the police. I hope the young kids will try to keep themselves safe.
I truly appreciate what the local groups did on Sunday. They helped to unite the Tuen Mun residents to voice out and stand up. So, like what you said, we gotta explain, explain and explain to clear those so-obsessed- with-being-peaceful-rational-and-non-violent people’s misconception about these local Direction Action groups.
Thanks for reporting the truth to HK people. Your articles report a great deal of information which the local mainstream media rarely covers.
The whole day can be split into two halves, the protest and the after protest. On top of this, it can also be split into two other parts, what happened and why it happened.
Regarding the actual protest and what happened, it was largely an orderly and peaceful affair meandering through central Tuen Mun to protest at the smugglers domination of the town. What was interesting was that I never heard, saw, or was told about any local residents objecting to the march. From my observations, I would say that the vast majority of the local residents supported the march and welcomed their daily plight being acknowledged by outsiders.
Once the march ended the tone changed. By this point there was at least 500 people packed into the Tuen Mun’s main square and without any kind of leadership the groups began to split into small splinter groups of between 50-100 people. These groups seemed to be led by local residents, who knew where all the main smuggler shops in the area were.
The group I was following arrived at one smuggler shop with about 100 protestors and blocked everyone in. There was chanting and shouting but no violence towards the shop. About ten minutes later the first police arrived. They lined themselves up infront of the shop, despite there being no actual threat of real violence.
After about a ten minute stand-off, the group I was with heard that in another Mall the police had already used pepper spray, so they’d decided to change venues and show support. As the group exited the main Tuen Mun Mall called, Trend Mall, it ran passed a group of about 10 policemen who had been sent as reinforcements. They were left in a quandary as to whether they should follow us, or go to the shop we’d just left.
Here is a critical point that you should understand, the group had arrived at the smuggler shop and completely blocked it, but there was no violence. Yet in a completely different location where the police were they’d already used pepper spray. The video of this is on the web. You can see clearly, the most that happened in that Mall was some shoving and defiant standing of ground. No actual violence against police.
Later, after another twenty or so minutes of standing in the main square, another splinter group broke off and headed back to the shop we had first visited. What was originally a small splinter group quickly formed into the entire protest group going back into Trend Mall. Not knowing the layout of Trend Mall and fearful of being trapped inside, I remained outside for about 15minutes, not realising that Trend mall has dozens of exits. I watched at least 300 protesters enter the Mall
Outside we could hear chanting and jeering coming from upstairs, but nothing that would indicate that there was any serious trouble going on. Suddenly a team of about 8 police officers ran through the main doors heading for the second floor, I immediately followed directly behind them up the two escalators. When this small team of officers reached the top of the second floor they were blocked by crowds. They immediately ploughed into the crowd and all hell broke out.
https://vine.co/v/OUhUmOx1KnW
I was directly behind the police officers so could see everything. I wouldn’t describe it as a fight, as only the police were truly fighting, but the police were totally outnumbered and being met with stiff resistance as the protestors refused to budge. There is no doubt in my mind, had the crowd wanted to attack the policemen like in any other city in the world, these policeman would have had no power to stop it and would have been easily over-powered.
It was altogether a ridiculous move on behalf of the police and shows just how much they abuse the protestors passivity. The scrap lasted a good few minutes and the police were definitely in a tight predicament of their own making. At least one policeman and two protestors were down.
Pepper spray was being sprayed indiscriminately like they were spraying cockroaches. It was a complete mess, the police weren’t protecting anything, they just bowled into the crowd fighting. Interestingly, it is now clear from the videos, that it is exactly the same police team that had used pepper spray in the previous Mall that came barging into the crowds at Trend Mall. So, they had effectively come from that incident bringing the same level of intensity with them.
I want to point out again here, we had been in Trend Mall with a 100 protestors just 45minutes prior and there were no police and no violence. Now the police were here and everything was in meltdown.
Within minutes of the pepper spray being fired another 10 or so policemen came up the escalator and reinforced the small corner they were blocked in. Within another 5minutes of that, the police hoisted their red flag and attacked the crowd again, dragging protestors onto the floor to arrest them.
As I watched the spectacle, it seemed that the wisest thing the police should have done is retreated. The crowd was not unruly, it wasn’t smashing or breaking anything, it was just there. Which confirms a point I’ve already made several times that the police whether by order or just shear stubbornness do not want to give up an inch of territory and will therefore use any amount of violence on the crowds for just being there. For them illegal assembly is Route One to violence now. The violence is not justified because they simply aren’t receiving any violence back.
In these situations, I know the police are scared. I also get that large crowds are intimidating, but as police officers, who are paid well by the tax payer, they need to manage themselves professionally and simply attacking crowds because they are there is just plain stupid and unprofessional.
If it were a gang of triads, they wouldn’t use the same level of violence as they would have a full on fight on their hands. These direct action groups of young people never assault the police and it’s akin to watching a lion take down a farmyard cow and the lion complaining because the cow swung its head too hard while the lion was was using both its teeth and claws to maul. The fights are always one-sided with the crowd only shoving and the police swinging batons at anything that moves.
After a few minutes of scuffles, the situation stabilised somewhat, and I was then singled out by a young policeman who bundled me down the escalator for no other reason than he was pumped up from the fight. After this, a number of lower level skirmishes happened all over Tuen Mun, but not nearly to the same intensity. The main fracas in my opinion was caused by the group of policeman barrelling into a large crowd on Level 10. What did they expect?
So, having established what happened, the main issue is WHY did it happen. Just why were the direct action groups there and why are they willing to be attacked time and time again by an angry and frustrated police force? This I will explain in the next post.
The first photo is the smuggler shop the first time we visited after the police arrived. You can see, it’s calm. It’s not chaotic. Once the police arrive in numbers they start throwing their weight around and this is what causes the conflicts.
Video and photos courtesy of their owners
bc’s Richard Scotford was in Tuen Mun covering the anti-smuggler protests as the pepper-spray started flying in the shopping mall when he was verbally harassed and assaulted by a young policeman who tried to shove him down an escalator.
Here’s his initial thoughts on what happened
“I don’t think they knew who I was, here’s what happened. You may have seen some video of the police raising a red flag and going crazy with the pepper spray in a shopping mall. Well in those videos, I am just to the right, out of shot standing at top of the escalator. Clearly I can’t go forward as there is pepper spray going off everywhere. The escalator I’m on has been sealed off at the bottom by police after I came up it. So as the police pushed forward I was left behind the police line.
A young policeman then beelined for me and started to push me down the escalator. I protested and showed my press card but he was shoving me quite hard to go down. When I revealed I was press he then feigned that he didn’t speak English. About 300 people all around lining the shopping centre could see him trying to bundle me down the stairs and began to boo. His senior officer came along and then took over.
This is what you see here now in the still photo. I’m trying to explain to him that I wasn’t even moving, was behind police line and that I was press. He said that I was crossing police cordon, which is a lie, as on the other side of the police line was a battle.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2nPGXBMptA
This is no different to the regular verbal and physical harassment that other members of the press and public have received when standing there peacefully covering the protests or walking around Hong Kong. Why is it that the police now feel the need to antagonistically and confrontationally get right-up in someone’s face and scream at them… If you want someone to move ask them politely. As can be seen in the video Richard is just standing there when the young policemen goes off on him. There’s no one around him, no pushing or shoving, no urgent need for him to move as the position he’s covering the fracas from is not interring with any police action…
Photo and video courtesy of their owners
