Hong Kong protests

[GeneChing]

So brutal. I won't complain about my commute again.

Cook caught up in shocking violence near Hong Kong MTR station recalls horrific ordeal as 20 people attacked him with sticks and canes as he made his way home from work
Calvin So was left severely injured with skin on his back torn, his hands and shoulders wounded and swollen
Embattled officers face heavy criticism for arriving at scene too late to stop attacks but pro-Beijing lawmaker Regina Ip calls for understanding
SCMP
Elizabeth Cheung
Peace Chiu
Athena Chan
Published: 2:26pm, 23 Jul, 2019


Calvin So shows the marks on his back caused by a brutal attack near Yuen Long MTR station on Sunday night. Photo: Sam Tsang

A cook caught up in shocking violence in a northern Hong Kong district on Sunday night has recalled the horrendous experience of his journey home.
Calvin So, 23, had finished work at a restaurant in Yoho Mall, the shopping centre next to Yuen Long MTR station in northwestern Hong Kong, and was walking towards an exit just after 9.45pm. He was attacked by a group of men after simply saying: “There are lots of people in white clothes here.”
“Some people approached me. Soon after, a person started beating me and more joined in,” So said, adding he was attacked by about 20 people, armed with sticks and canes, during the assault.
“I didn’t do anything and asked them to stop beating me. But they just ignored me,” he said.


A mob of men in white T-shirts attack protesters and passengers at Yuen Long MTR station on Sunday night. Photo: Handout

The railway station was the scene of unprecedented violence on Sunday night as a marauding gang of men in white T-shirts ambushed people including demonstrators returning home from a protest march elsewhere in the city. Some 45 people were injured and 11 have since been arrested.
So’s ordeal lasted for around five minutes before he tried to flee to safety. He was chased and struck several more times as he escaped the brutality.
The violent attacks left his back severely injured with torn skin. His hands and legs were wounded and his shoulders swollen.
He was admitted to Tuen Mun Hospital for treatment and said the injuries left him unable to sleep on his back on the first night.
“I was in pain whenever something touched my back,” he said.
So’s recovery was expected to take several weeks and he hoped police would investigate the assaults.
“There should be at least a public explanation,” he said. “It is unacceptable to see those people randomly attacking others.”

There should be at least a public explanation
Calvin So

By 6pm on Tuesday, five men were still receiving treatment at Tuen Mun Hospital. Among them, one was critical, one was serious and the remaining three were stable.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s former security chief and veteran pro-establishment lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee called for residents to show understanding over police handling of the violence, arguing the force had faced attacks comparable to “guerilla warfare” over the past two months.
Sales down at least 10 per cent at book fair as protest halts traffic
“The force has been worked to the point of exhaustion and manpower is strained … with so many large-scale protests and attacks since June 9,” Ip, a member of the government’s advisory panel, said on a radio programme on Tuesday.
The city’s embattled police force came under heavy fire for arriving at the scene too late to stop the attacks on anti-government protesters, journalists and passers-by at the station, as well as terrified passengers on a train.

Regina Ip calls on Hongkongers to show understanding to city’s exhausted police force. Photo: Sam Tsang

Ip, an Executive Council member and New People’s Party lawmaker, believed many officers from Yuen Long were deployed to Hong Kong Island as protesters laid siege to Beijing’s liaison office following a march against a now-suspended extradition bill.
Hong Kong has seen a wave of anti-government, mostly peaceful, protests since early June. The city’s legislature was stormed and trashed on July 1, after Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor refused to fully withdraw the bill, which would have allowed the transfer of suspects to other jurisdictions including mainland China.
Lam first suspended the bill, then declared it “dead” on July 9.


The Chinese National emblem is vandalised by protesters who rally outside the liaison office in Sai Ying Pun on Sunday. Photo: Edmond So

“I hope Hongkongers can understand our police have done very well handling things such as public security and theft, so the overall crime rate is very low,” Ip said.
“What happened over the past month or so is not normal violence, but continued violence. It is like facing urban guerillas.”
Ip added she hoped the Chinese army would not be needed to handle the current crisis.
“I am worried some people are trying to force the People’s Liberation Army to come here,” she said, though she believed the Hong Kong and central governments would try to prevent this as much as possible.

I am worried some people are trying to force the People’s Liberation Army to come here
Lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee

She also warned that while there were no casualties at the siege of the liaison office, there was strong political meaning to the actions, with the compound vandalised and the national emblem on the building front defaced.
Meanwhile, about 30 members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) Hong Kong and journalists silently protested outside the press club on Tuesday morning to condemn the violence directed at journalists when covering the protests last weekend, particularly the “sickening scenes of mob violence” in Yuen Long.
At least four local journalists were attacked by the marauding gang on Sunday. Two victims were reportedly from Apple Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper, and one each from the Stand News website and cable broadcaster Now TV.
One female reporter was attacked during a live online report. The news outlet said her hands and right shoulder were hurt and she suffered swelling on the back of her head.
President of the press club Jodi Schneider said: “We are out here standing for press freedom and to say yes to press freedom, no to violence against journalists. We are renewing our call for independent investigation by a third party, into any harassment or violence against journalists during the protests in Hong Kong.”


A soldier stands guard at the People’s Liberation Army’s Hong Kong garrison. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

In a statement, the club called on Hong Kong police and the authorities to urgently find and bring to justice those who carried out the unprecedented attack.
A joint statement issued on Monday by the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association and the Independent Commentators Association made an urgent appeal to local police to protect citizens and journalists.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Cook recalls post-work ordeal as group of about 20 bash him

[GeneChing]

Who are the Chinese 'triads' accused of attacks on Hong Kong protesters?
The Telegraph
James Rothwell
,The Telegraph•July 23, 2019


Screenshot of the moment men in white shirts began beating commuters on a train in Hong Kong. Many of the victims had taken part in a pro-democracy protest earlier that day - AFP

China's shadowy triads have long been suspected of doing Beijing's dirty work.

Perhaps most commonly associated in the West with over-the-top action sequences in kung-fu films, the term “triad” refers to various sects of criminal gangs which often harbour intense rivalries with each other.

Hong Kong is a hub of triad activity, a legacy of the Communist era purge of organised crime from the mainland.

The ancient gangs have been associated with the suppression of protesters and troublemakers in both Hong Kong and parts of southern China in recent years, where they act as thugs for hire.

Sunday's attacks were carried out in plain view of security cameras, and with a mysterious lack of police presence.

The most prominent triad gangs in Hong Kong are 14K and Sun Yee On, and there have been claims that the Wo Sing Wo group are behind Sunday’s attack.

In 2014, triad thugs riding a motorcycle attacked the outspoken editor of a Hong Kong newspaper editor with a meat cleaver, leaving a six-inch wound on his back. Members of the Shui Fong triad, it has been claimed, carried out the attack in exchange for payments of one million Hong Kong dollars (£100,000) each.

Ramy Inocencio 英若明
✔
@RamyInocencio
THREAD: These unsettling #HongKong videos going viral speak for themselves. If you knew *nothing* about the #HongKongProtests you’d still know this is not right. Local reports say pro-gov’t triads beat anti-gov’t protestors - and anyone in between - at Yuen Long rail station.

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In the same year, at the height of the Occupy Movement protests in Hong Kong, suspected triad members beat protesters and destroyed their tents in the Mong Kok district, the gangs’ heartland.

Local authorities in mainland China have also been accused of paying triads to forcefully evict homeowners from their property.

In one case in 2011, a middle-aged woman who refused to move out died after her house was demolished by a gang while she was still inside. As far back as the 17th century, triad gang members were pawns in political struggles, including one attempt to overthrow the Qing dynasty and restore the preceding Ming dynasty.



When the Communist Party took power in China after the Second World War, vast numbers of triad gang members fled to Hong Kong.

Later, in the 1960s, the height of triad activity in Hong Kong, police suspected up to one in six people were members of roughly 60 different triad gangs.


Men in white T-shirts with poles are seen in Yuen Long after they attacked pro-democracy activists at a train station, in Hong Kong Credit: Reuters

More recently, drug trafficking has become a significant source of the triads’ income, along with extortion, money laundering, gambling and prostitution.

Gang members are often recruited in their late teens, and must take 36 oaths as part of their initiation ritual.

Initiates are warned they will be killed "killed by five thunderbolts" if they fail in their duties.

THREADS
Hong kong protests
Gung Fu and triads

[GeneChing]

1 AUGUST 2019
“Be Water!”: seven tactics that are winning Hong Kong’s democracy revolution
The strategies of Hong Kong protesters, honed through weekly clashes with police, offer a masterclass to activists worldwide.
BY ANTONY DAPIRAN


GETTY IMAGES
Protesters are enveloped by tear gas during a demonstration in Hong Kong, 28 July

For almost two months, a wave of anti-government protests have rocked Hong Kong. Initially sparked by a government proposal to introduce a law that would allow the extradition of criminal suspects to stand trial in mainland Chinese courts, the protests have morphed into a broader pro-democracy movement, demanding greater government accountability and universal suffrage. Protests have largely been driven by young activists, who have developed and adapted their strategies during weekly protests and clashes with police, offering a masterclass in protest for activists worldwide. Here are some of their key tactics.

No more occupying – “Be Water!”

The worldwide “occupy” movements following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 served as the inspiration for Hong Kong’s previous mass act of civil disobedience – a series of protests known as “Occupy Central” or the “Umbrella Movement” – in 2014. These protests adopted the “occupation” logic of the prior movements, with protesters occupying the city’s main thoroughfares for 79 days in the hope that the disruption would force the government to the negotiating table. The government refused to budge, and the protests ended in failure.

This time around, Hong Kong’s protesters are taking their inspiration from a source closer to home: local hero, kung-fu movie star Bruce Lee, who famously advised: “Be Water”.


A banner used by a Hong Kong protester. Photo credit Mary Hui.

Hong Kong’s young protesters are eschewing the fixed, immobile occupation strategies of the past, in favour of a highly mobile, agile style of protest. A rally may turn into a march; a march may begin in one direction and abruptly change to another direction; the focus of a particular protest action may only emerge in the course of the march itself. In recent protests, small sub-groups of protesters dispatched themselves to carry out targeted “wildcat” occupations of a government building, flooding the entrance lobbies, escalators and lifts. When the government declared the building closed and dismissed staff for the day, the protesters dispersed and moved on to their next target. As Bruce Lee said, “Water can flow, or it can crash!”

Open-source protest

The current wave of protests in Hong Kong is leaderless. This is partly a response to the Hong Kong government’s aggressive prosecution of past protest leaders: Umbrella Movement figurehead Joshua Wong was only recently released from prison, while many other leaders including the initiators of the Occupy Central plan, Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man, remain behind bars. With no obvious leader, there is no one to imprison.

But the lack of a centralised leadership is also a result of the online, organic tactics. Protesters use online forums such a LIHKG – a kind of local, lo-fi version of Reddit where users comment and vote on posts – as well as Telegram chat groups (the larger among these have tens of thousands of members), where the poll function enables participants to vote on next steps: should the protesters stay on or disperse? Protesters vote on the spot, and act accordingly.

Professor Francis Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has called it “open-source” protest. Volunteers with megaphones or walkie-talkies help to announce and coordinate, but they are not “leaders”. Protesters have also explained that this lack of leadership encourages everyone to get involved and contribute to the movement. In this way, the protesters are enacting the kind of participatory democracy they would like to see.

Airdrop

The protesters’ use of Telegram is well-known, and so it was perhaps not a surprise that during the most intense early clashes between protesters and police, Telegram reported that it had been subject to a distributed denial of service attack originating from mainland China. Add on top of this the massive overload of mobile networks when tens of thousands of people are standing in the same small area trying to access their devices simultaneously, and communications can quickly become unreliable. In response, protesters have turned to alternative peer-to-peer technologies, in particular the “AirDrop” feature that every Apple phone is equipped with (AirDrop enables iPhone users to send images to each other over BlueTooth connection, without the need for a mobile connection).

Protesters have used AirDrop both to share messages with participants in the course of protests, and to spread the word among a broader community. Commuters on Hong Kong subway system may find themselves receiving unsolicited AirDrop messages with slogans promoting the protesters’ cause or advertising the next rally. Prior to protests, Telegram chat groups carry the reminder “Remember to have AirDrop switched on!” Towards the end of a recent protest, as the protesters were preparing to again “Be Water” and disperse together, my mobile phone suddenly began to ping with AirDrop requests carrying the simple message: “Leave together at 7:00.”


Airdrop used by Hong Kong protesters. Photo credit Antony Dapiran.

Supply lines and sign language

The experiences of the Umbrella Movement and recent clashes with police have taught protesters what equipment they need at the front lines. To ensure new supplies can reach the front lines quickly, Hong Kong’s protesters have developed a unique system of hand signals, to send messages through the crowd about what equipment is required.


Hong Kong protesters’ sign language. Photo credit Antony Dapiran.

A sign is passed onwards through the crowd back to the supply depots where goods have been transported near to the protest site, and the requested items are then passed through the crowd along a human chain back to where they are needed. These human supply chains have stretched as far as a kilometre in length, and are an impressive sight to behold.

Antony Dapiran
✔
@antd
A VIDEO THREAD: How did HK protesters use hand signals & human chains to get supplies quickly to front lines on Monday? Here, they need more helmets at the front line at LegCo doors. What to do? The hand signal for “helmets” is passed from the front line through the crowd...

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This sign language has become so iconic that on a recent “silver haired” rally of elderly Hong Kongers marching in support of the young generation, the elders were learning and practicing the youngsters hand signals in solidarity.

Antony Dapiran
✔
@antd
· Jul 17, 2019
Replying to @antd
The young people are handing out crackers and water to the elderly folks marching. In return elders are telling the young folks to stay safe.

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

Antony Dapiran
✔
@antd
Teaching the elders how to do the youngsters’ protest sign language. All the elders joining in.

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continued next post

[GeneChing]

Neutralising tear gas

When police fired tear gas on protesters at the beginning of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement protests of 2014, it caused widespread outrage across the Hong Kong community and helped spark the 79-day occupation of the city. Fast-forward five years, and the deployment of tear gas on Hong Kong’s streets has become all-too commonplace. Indeed, over the past weekend alone tear gas was fired by police in dense, residential neighbourhoods on both Saturday and Sunday, and on Sunday evening almost constantly over a period of some four hours. Part of the reason for the increased amounts of tear gas is that protesters have learned how to neutralise it.

Small mobile teams of “firefighters” wait at the rear of the front lines equipped with traffic cones. When a tear gas shell lands among the crowd, they race in to cover the shell with the traffic cone, creating a “chimney” that contains and funnels the smoke away. Another team member then moves in to pour water into the cone to douse the shell, putting it out. When a traffic cone is not available, water or wet towels are used to smother the tear gas shells, or a nimble protester wearing heat-proof gloves will snatch up the shell and throw it, either back at police or to the side of the crowd out of harm’s way.

Antony Dapiran
✔
@antd
THREAD: How do HK’s #HardHatRevolution protesters neutralize police tear gas? Last night’s clashes with police in Sheung Wan showed how protester “firefighter” teams work. Here they are in position towards the rear of the front lines & ready to mobilize. Note the traffic cones.

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Avoiding a stampede

One of the greatest risks of injury or death in a crowd arises from the dangers of a stampede. This threat is compounded by the urban geography of Hong Kong: recent protests have taken place on narrow, winding back streets in the old Sheung Wan neighbourhood, or on mazes of overhead crossings and walkways that are interlaced across Hong Kong. When police fire tear gas into tightly-packed crowds, or the rapid-response “Raptor” police teams launch one of their lightning baton charges, the risk of the crowd panicking – and a stampede forming – is acute. Aware of these risks, crowds of protesters chant “One, Two, One Two…” in unison as they retreat, and march in time to the count. This ensures the retreat is orderly and avoids what could otherwise become a deadly crush.

Antony Dapiran
✔
@antd
· Jul 28, 2019
Replying to @antd
Another tear gas volley on Des Voeux Road. Protesters throw some tear gas shells back at Police.

Embedded video

Antony Dapiran
✔
@antd
Under fire from police tear gas, the crowd retreats down a narrow side street. To avoid a lethal stampede, they all chant in unison “1, 2, 1, 2...!” and march in time to the chant.

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The Revolution will be crowdfunded

Hong Kong’s activists wanted to win international attention for their cause, and saw the planned G20 summit of world leaders to be held in Osaka at the end of June as an opportunity. Though unable to get their struggle onto the G20 conference room tables, they aimed for the next best thing: their breakfast tables. Activists took out a series of full-page advertisements in newspapers across the world to publicise their struggle. They crowdfunded the adverts with a campaign that had raised over £600,000 within a matter of hours. Volunteers prepared and proofed the text in multiple languages, booked the advertising space and delivered the artwork to newspapers across the world. In the days leading up to and during the G20 summit, striking full-page black and white advertisements reading “Stand with Hong Kong at G20” appeared in newspapers across the world, from the New York Times to The Guardian, Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Australian and the Asahi Shimbun, the Globe & Mail and the Seoul Daily.


An advert placed in the New York Times by Hong Kong protesters. Photo credit Antony Dapiran.


Antony Dapiran is a Hong Kong-based writer and lawyer, and the author of City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong published by Penguin.

'Be Water' is really a Daoist concept that Bruce Lee is credited with because of that famous interview. It's amazing how that still resonates.

[GeneChing]

ENTER THE DRAGON
Hong Kong Protesters, Inspired By the Late Great Martial Artist Bruce Lee, Stun Beijing
Groups of “front line” protesters have adopted tactics and strategies of their own to express their dissent in ways that resemble guerrilla warfare rather than planned rallies.

Brendon Hong
Updated 08.07.19 4:15AM ET Published 08.06.19 11:50AM ET


Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast / Photos Getty

HONG KONG—A citywide strike and a series of anti-police activities shut down much of what is normally an international financial center and logistics hub here on Monday, as the city entered its ninth week of protests. Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flagship airline, canceled more than 150 flights. The subway was paralyzed. Major banks shut their branches. Shops were closed for the day. The Hang Seng stock index dipped by more than 3.6 percent at market closing, wiping out all gains made since January.

Many of the protesters, who have adopted black as their color and wear it from head to toe, are in their teens or twenties. How did they manage to bring a major city almost to a halt?

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water . . . Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
— Martial arts icon Bruce Lee, "The Dragon"

An organization called the Civil Human Rights Front that is affiliated with all of Hong Kong’s democratic camps, including dozens of political parties and nongovernmental organizations, has pulled together the massive marches that have involved up to two million people at a time. But groups of “front line” protesters have adopted tactics and strategies of their own to express their dissent in ways that resemble guerrilla warfare rather than planned rallies.

The overarching philosophy behind blackshirt actions is “Be Water,” two words lifted from Bruce Lee’s idea of how to overcome what may seem like insurmountable fear: “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water... Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Taking the concept even further, protesters have even formulated four principles: “Be strong as ice, be fluid like water, gather like dew, scatter like mist.”

Blackshirts readily admit that their portrayal as heroes fighting for freedom is overblown, and I have more than once heard individuals say, “We’re all afraid. But if that’s why we do nothing, then our future is ****ed.” They have taken Bruce Lee’s concept to heart, studying the methods used by civilians in Istanbul, Cairo, and other locales to limit the impact of tear gas and pepper spray.

Some have formed small groups like pit crews, covering canisters with a container like a traffic cone and dousing it with water—to kill the chemical reaction that releases irritant smoke—while using umbrellas to block the views of police cameras that may be aimed at them.

Alex Hofford
@alexhofford
Truly awesome the way Hong Kongers deal with tear gas.#antiELAB #HongKongProtests#BeWater

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Others have found the perfect implement to extinguish gas canisters by cutting off their oxygen supply—a wok lid, found in any Cantonese kitchen.

Video clips of protests that took place during New York’s Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, at Istanbul’s Gezi Park, and those initiated by Paris’ mouvement des gilets jaunes have found their way into YouTube playlists shared by blackshirts, offering inspiration for countermeasures against the Hong Kong Police Force, or at least visual cues for how a crackdown by security forces may be executed.

Texts like Mao Zedong’s On Guerrilla Warfare, which describes the asymmetric battlefield tactics deployed by the Chinese Communist Party’s militias against Japanese troops in the '30s and ’40s, blend with the idea of “being water” to move dozens, even hundreds, of people from one district to another with unpolished efficiency. Decisions to stop and stage actions are made on the fly, taking into consideration a neighborhood’s geographical layout and exit routes suggested by local residents.

Nectar Gan
✔
@Nectar_Gan
This is how protesters flow cross an arterial road in #HongKong like water: some help stop traffic, some help others jump down or climb up the road dividers. In less than a couple of mins over a hundred people have crossed Gloucester Road, and traffic returns to normal

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Protesters who have studied Mao’s text realize the irony in referencing the Great Helmsman, as they are, in part, responding to Beijing’s increasingly obvious encroachment in Hong Kong’s governance. But one blackshirt cited Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to me, emphasizing the need to understand one’s enemies, or else face constant defeat and peril.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

The syncretic appetite has paid off. By late afternoon on Monday, blackshirts managed to temporarily occupy public areas in at least six districts as well as part of Hong Kong’s airport. Earlier in the day and over the weekend, they also erected makeshift barriers and blocked access to a cross-harbor tunnel that links Hong Kong Island with the Kowloon Peninsula.

In most cases, the presence was meant to be temporary, with retreats to new locations determined by a flow of information about police movements posted on an online forum called LIHKG or communicated via messaging apps.

The idea is to force the police to keep up with mobile groups of protesters who aren’t weighed down by their gear, sapping the security forces’ energy and morale through repetitive motions—and to minimize the number of arrests that are made on any given day. The police have taken 568 people, aged between 13 and 76, into custody since June 9. Among them, 148 were arrested on Monday.

Blackshirts constantly heckle police officers, calling them corrupt, or labeling them as dogs or affiliated with triad gangs. In return, the police berate protesters for being “useless” and call them trash and cockroaches, presumably because they wear dark clothing and scurry in swarms.

The Hong Kong Police Force currently faces massive disapproval and opposition from the public. In just the past few days, they have mistakenly arrested foreign nationals who were not involved with the protests (ignoring explanations made in English), released tear gas that choked the elderly in their homes, forced their way into residential compounds, attacked folks who just happened to be out—even when their commanding officer was issuing orders to retreat.

Yet the police were conspicuously absent whenever groups of armed men in white shirts showed up. On Monday, one crew whacked protesters with bamboo poles; 20 kilometers away, another gang armed with blades and bats was out for blood, slashing and striking people as they charged past.

In an attempt to understand how the police have become a force with their own agenda, decoupled from communities in every district in the city and allegedly willing to collaborate with underworld elements, some blackshirts have sought answers from books like Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.

“Be strong as ice, be fluid like water, gather like dew, scatter like mist.”
— Principles for Hong Kong protestors

On the surface, the protesters of Hong Kong resemble decentralized black bloc groups, with masks and hoods concealing the identities of individuals. But they have refrained from inflicting property damage, which has been a trademark of the blocs in Europe, most recently in Paris. Even during clashes that have taken place in shopping malls, the Hong Kong protesters have been careful, and when they stormed Hong Kong’s legislative headquarters, there were signs put up to remind everyone who entered that books and cultural objects were off limits and had to be preserved, and that theft would not be tolerated.

On Monday, when multiple police stations were surrounded, some being defaced or damaged, a forum post indicated that one particular station is classified as a historic building and heritage site, so protesters backed off.

It is decisions like that one, as well as a general sense of reverence for the cultures that define Hong Kong, that have led to sustained support for the “front line” blackshirts. If the umbrella symbolized the pro-democracy movement that changed the calculus in Hong Kong nearly five years ago, then the hard hat, goggles, and gas mask are objects that have come to exemplify the current tsunami of dissent emanating from all corners of the city—to such an extent that the three items are being sold in packages at some hardware stores, at times nearly at cost.

Denise Ho (HOCC)
✔
@hoccgoomusic
Civil disobedience at its finest.🤣🤣🤣🤣

General strike in Hong Kong today, drivers in Tai Po are helping out by practicing their turning skills.#hongkongprotests #strike

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The blackshirts commit to a wide spectrum of actions, ranging from simple traffic disruptions to more radical responses. For instance, the Chinese national flag has been removed from a landmark pole twice since Saturday and tossed irreverently into the harbor, prompting the city’s previous chief executive to offer a reward of more than $127,000 to anyone who comes forth with information that leads to the prosecution of those involved.

Elsewhere, small groups have hurled bricks and other objects at quarters where the families of police officers reside, drawing criticism. Some used Molotov cocktails last night, chucking them into a police station’s parking lot.

Yet a core tenet of the protests is to leave no one behind, to back each other no matter what, while discouraging tactics that may create volatile situations. So far, that precept holds, and the blackshirts seemed only to have gained additional support from Hongkongers, their loyalty to each other unbroken.

In public spaces, especially on subway trains, information about actions and rallies is not just shared on social media but AirDropped from phone to phone, keeping the citizenry abreast of the latest developments in a direct way.

“Of course we are fearful. But if that happens, I'm sure every Hongkonger knows how to react, and will be water. We will go back home and sleep.”
— Blackshirt responding to the military threat

Cognizant of the importance of outreach, the blackshirts are taking their message even further, and held their first press conference on Tuesday morning to act as a “counterweight to the government's monopoly” on disseminating information.

Even when facing questions from the press, the overarching philosophy that has come to define every blackshirt action was channeled. Answering a query about how they may respond to intervention by the People’s Liberation Army, one said, “Of course we are fearful. But if that happens, I'm sure every Hongkonger knows how to react, and will be water. We will go back home and sleep.”

In between the musings of a modern kung-fu master, an anti-imperial fighter turned authoritarian, an ancient battle strategist, and contemporary thinkers, the blackshirts’ collective headspace exists. They are the product of a city that refuses to wither away under communist rule. Weekends of rage have become the norm, with flash mob clashes taking place multiple times throughout the rest of the week.

For those in power, winning means a return to the status quo. An agreeable outcome is a more complicated, fractured matter for the blackshirts—and the rest of Hong Kong.

The Chinese Communist Party’s signals have been clear. State-run media outlets released a video of Shenzhen police in drills to handle a situation that resembles what plays out on the streets of Hong Kong. And today, the spokesperson of Beijing’s top office that handles Hong Kong affairs, Yang Guang, warned of the “black hands”—foreign forces—behind the protests, and called upon Hongkongers to defend their homeland. Maybe Yang missed the memo: That’s exactly what they’re doing.

More on that Bruce Lee Chinese connection...

[David Jamieson]

I've got a bad feeling about how this is all going to end.

Don't have a lot of faith in Xi and his government having a change of heart about democracy and autonomous government inside of of Chinese territory.

The so called "leaders" will be getting getting rounded up and extradited under the bill that everyone is protesting to never been seen or heard from again.

Authoritarian states are harsh.