We celebrate today ten years of Resistance in Hong Kong to the Occupation by the Chinese Communist Party, the loss of liberty and the equality of all human souls, especially the rights of voting for their own leaders and those of a free press and free speech, and the theft by Chinese Communist Party imperial conquest and dominion in collaboration with the British state of what should have become an independent and sovereign nation and a free society of equals.
Hong Kong may yet achieve the dream of democracy, for though she is Occupied she is unbroken and unbowed. Who resists and refuses to submit becomes Unconquered, and is free; and as such is also a bearer of the Promethean Fire of Liberty and able to set others free as Living Autonomous Zones.
What must be done, as Lenin asked in the essay that ignited the Russian Revolution? First America and the free world must recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong; second we and our allies must enact a total Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction of all trade and manufacture with mainland China until the forces of Occupation withdraw.
Shall we be collaborators and profiteers of slave labor, or shall we stand in solidarity to cast down from their thrones all those who would enslave us?
In the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.”
As written by Helen Davidson in The Guardian, in an article entitled ‘I was so naive’: 10 years after Umbrella protests, Hongkongers remember China’s crackdown: Anniversary of pro-democracy demonstration takes place in city where protest has been largely criminalised and activists silenced; “A decade ago today Hong Kong’s Central district filled with protesters, angry at Chinese government plans to renege on a promise of a fully democratic vote. What became known as Occupy Central, or the Umbrella protests, paralysed the city’s financial centre and galvanised a generation of young people.
Today Hong Kong’s streets are quiet. Protest has been largely criminalised, and many of the leaders of the Umbrella movement have been exiled, jailed or otherwise silenced.
Looking back, Wendy* remembers the feeling of that first day of Occupy. She was 25 and believed in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and its promise to deliver universal suffrage to the people now that the territory had been returned from British to Chinese control. But instead, China’s government announced that in elections people would only be able to choose from a few candidates handpicked by a mostly pro-Beijing committee.
“It seemed that the government wanted to break their promise,” Wendy tells the Guardian from Hong Kong. “So I went out.”
Protest action against Beijing’s plan had long been in the works. Three activists known as the Occupy Trio – academics Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man, and reverend Chu Yiu-ming – had for months been training a few thousand people in non-violent resistance to occupy Hong Kong’s finance district as a last resort if demands weren’t met. But student protests earlier that week had escalated to the storming of a public square, and the Occupy start date was brought forward. Thousands more joined.
It was 28 September. Wendy thought it would be peaceful, but stayed clear of the frontlines just in case. Then at 5:58pm, police fired teargas into the peaceful crowd.
“I smelled some strange scents and my eyes got uncomfortable,” Wendy says. “I looked up to the bridge over me, seeing a group of police holding shields and stepping forward to the protesters. The scene was frightening. I just kept asking in my mind ‘Why do they treat us in that way?’.”
Emily Lau, a veteran pro-democracy advocate and then a sitting legislator, had gone to speak to police earlier that day about bringing in some equipment for the Occupy Trio. Instead, they arrested her. By the time she was released later that night “the whole world had changed”.
Lau and a colleague took a taxi from the police station to the top of a hill overlooking Central.
“When we looked down, we were shocked because the roads were blocked and there were people just everywhere occupying Connaught Road,” she says.
‘The first step in a bigger war’
The police force’s decision to use teargas on day one against a peaceful crowd had just brought more people to the streets. Soon a vast self-sufficient tent city took over the Admiralty district. Other camps formed in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. Volunteer groups took care of provisions, sanitation, and tutoring of students, while calling for Beijing to reverse its plans and for Hong Kong’s chief executive, CY Leung, to step down.
Tony*, then a “regular office worker”, joined the camp in his lunch breaks and evenings. He describes what he saw as “astonishing”.
“It was a completely new Hong Kong, a beautiful Hong Kong that I had never seen before. We saw Hong Kong people were really passionate about democracy, about their future and having a say in how the city is run.”
Thomas*, a Hong Kong writer now based in London, says a lot of people got engaged in the movement for the first time because of how government and authorities had responded to their concerns.
“There wasn’t any attempt [by Beijing] to just sort of say: I understand this isn’t quite what you want, but this is the best we can get … It was literally: thank us and love us for it, aren’t we wonderful,” he says.
But as Occupy stretched on, the public’s tolerance waned and divisions deepened among protesters. The government remained unmoved, and police became more aggressive. Court injunctions ordered sections of the camps to clear, and Joshua Wong, a leader of the student protesters, ended his hunger strike. Numbers dwindled as the Trio urged people to leave, but the more radical student groups were determined to stay.
“T[he trio] didn’t think the whole thing should drag on for so long,” says Lau. “I supported ending it because it doesn’t mean ending the whole thing. You just go home and prepare to fight another day.”
It ended on 15 December after 79 days, without having achieved its stated aims and with deep fissures between pro-democracy factions, but still with a sense of hope.
“There was a big banner that said ‘We will be back’,” recalls Tony. “People were hugging each other and saying farewells. There was a sense that the battle hadn’t succeeded but it might be the first step in a bigger war.”
In an editorial one year later, the South China Morning Post said the outcome of the Occupy protests “proved that Beijing will not yield to confrontational tactics”. Protest leaders from both the older and student cohorts, including Tai, Chan and Wong, were eventually convicted and jailed.
But, Lau says, “the protests had woken up the young people”. New political parties and activist groups emerged. In June 2019, millions took to the streets again in massive pro-democracy protests. Participants used tactics and strategies fine-tuned during Occupy.
But there was less of the hope and fight of 2014. Instead, the 2019 protests felt like a defiant “last cry of an animal that was dying”, says Thomas. Again Beijing did not yield, launching a crackdown that shocked even the most pessimistic observers.
“The atmosphere and political reality today are totally different [to 2014],” says Willy Lam, a senior non-resident fellow and China specialist at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington.
Wendy looks back at how she felt in 2014 and laughs a little.
“I thought 2014 was shit at that time, but compared to 2019 it was just a piece of cake,” she says. “I was so naive, believing the government would be sensible, respect people’s voice, and abide by the promise in the Basic Law. But now I can say I was totally wrong.”
Tony, now a lawyer based in the UK, says the Occupy protests left an important legacy, strengthening Hongkongers self-identity and their aspirations for democracy, human rights, and rule of law.
“Now I see that as part of the diaspora … and I hope people in the free world don’t forget Hong Kong. There is still something to be fought for.”
As written in the Hong Kong Free Press, in an article entitled 10 years on, where are the leaders of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement now? ; “Saturday marks the 10th anniversary of the start of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, which saw protesters occupy major thoroughfares in key districts to call for the right to elect their own leader.
The 79-day civil disobedience campaign was launched in response to a ruling from Beijing that would allow Hongkongers to vote for their chief executive, but only from among candidates vetted by the central government.
The occupation of major roads was largely peaceful and leaders of the movement received relatively light sentences for the 2014 offences. Their political demands were not met. Huge protests which swept the city almost five years later, resulting in widespread damage and mass arrests and injuries, resulted in more than 10,000 arrests and saw hundreds sent to jail.
In 2020 a Beijing-imposed national security law came into force, prescribing penalties of up to life imprisonment and effectively ending public displays of dissent.
The movement began on September 28, 2014, when police fired tear gas at protesters who had gathered on Harcourt Road in Admiralty. It was the first time the chemical agent had been used on Hongkongers since the leftist riots in 1967. By the next day, protesters had occupied sites in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, where they would stay for weeks. The Umbrella Movement ended that December, after public transport companies affected by road closures obtained injunctions.
A number of protest leaders emerged during the civil disobedience campaign, some becoming household names in the city and beyond. Of the 12 activists charged in two high-profile trials in the years after the movement, two have spent the past few years in detention.
Others have left Hong Kong for places such as Taiwan and the US, and some appear to have withdrawn from politics entirely.
HKFP looks at the their involvement in one of Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy movements, where they are today, and their thoughts on how the city has changed.
Joshua Wong
Joshua Wong, in secondary school at the time and a leader of student group Scholarism, led a class boycott in the lead-up to the protests. He was arrested on September 24, 2014, after he and others stormed Civic Square outside the government headquarters.
Conviction and sentence: Wong was in July 2016 found guilty of taking part in an unlawful assembly at Civic Square and handed an 80-hour community service order. He was found not guilty of inciting others to take part in an unlawful assembly. The government then challenged the sentence in the Court of Appeal, with a Department of Justice (DOJ) representative arguing for the immediate imprisonment of the activists. The DOJ won and Wong was handed a six-month jail term in August 2017, but it was quashed in February 2018, when the Court of Final Appeal reinstated the original non-custodial sentences.
Where is he now? Wong has been detained since November 2020, when he was denied bail ahead of sentencing for a 2019 protest charge. In March 2021, he was charged with conspiring to commit subversion under the national security law imposed by Beijing in June 2020. He has since served prison terms for other protest-related offences, and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the subversion charge as part of the city’s largest national security case.
Nathan Law
A university student in 2014, Nathan Law was also a member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. He was arrested over the storming of Civic Square.
Conviction and sentence: Law was in 2016 found guilty of inciting others to take part in an unlawful assembly over events at Civic Square and handed a 120-hour community service order. Following a government appeal, he was given an eight-month jail term, though that was quashed by the Court of Final Appeal.
Where is he now? Law announced in July 2020, days after Beijing imposed its national security law, that he had moved to the UK. Last year, the city’s national security police issued arrest warrants for Law and 12 other overseas pro-democracy figures for alleged violations of the security legislation, placing bounties of HK$1 million on each of their heads. He continues to be involved in activism, though in August the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) – a Washington DC-based advocacy group which he co-founded – cut ties with Law. Media outlets reported that the development was related to allegations of sexual harassment made against Law, which he has denied.
Alex Chow
Alex Chow was a University of Hong Kong student and secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students during the Umbrella Movement, and like Wong and Law was arrested over the Civic Square storming. He told HKFP he spent the early weeks of the protests sleeping outside the Legislative Council and meeting pro-democracy lawmakers, activists and other civil society groups.
Conviction and sentence: Chow was found guilty of taking part in an unlawful assembly and given a three-week jail term suspended for one year. Upon a government appeal, the Court of Appeal handed him a seven-month jail term, which was later overturned by the city’s top court, ruling that the original suspended term was sufficient.
Where is he now? The 34-year-old lives in the US, where he researches Hong Kong’s civil society for a doctorate degree in geography, and sits on the board of the Hong Kong Democracy Council.
Chow told HKFP earlier this month it was “devastating” that there had been no large-scale protests in Hong Kong since national security laws came into effect. In 2014, there remained room to debate the possibility of democratic reform under Hong Kong’s governing One Country, Two Systems framework. Now, Chow said, that room had disappeared.
Chow added that he had no plans to return to the city as he did not think it would be safe for him to do so.
Benny Tai
Benny Tai, then a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, headed the Occupy Central With Love and Peace campaign, which advocated non-violent civil disobedience. A well-known pro-democracy activist, he was one of the most recognisable faces of the 79-day movement.
Conviction and sentence: Tai was charged with conspiring to commit public nuisance, “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance,” and tried alongside eight others – known as the Occupy Nine – over their roles in the Umbrella Movement. In April 2019, Tai was found guilty of the first two charges and sentenced to one year and four months in jail.
Where is he now? Tai was among 47 pro-democracy figures charged with conspiring to commit subversion in the city’s largest national security case. He has been detained since being taken into police custody on February 28, 2021, ahead of a marathon bail hearing in early March that year. He pleaded guilty to the charge, and was described by prosecutors as the “mastermind” of the conspiracy to subvert state power. Like all the 45 convicted in the case, Tai faces up to life imprisonment.
Chan Kin-man
Chan Kin-man, then a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, led the Occupy Central campaign with Tai and Chu Yiu-ming.
Conviction and sentence: Chan faced the same three charges as Tai, and was also convicted of the first two, receiving a 16-month jail term. The only one of the campaign’s three leaders to personally testify during the trial, Chan said in court that the Occupy trio had lost control of the movement after it escalated into a full-blown street occupation.
Where is he now? Chan moved to Taiwan in 2021 to take up a visiting professor position at the National Chengchi University in Taipei, where he taught courses on social movements and China. Last month, he said in a Facebook post that his stint had ended, and that he was joining the sociology department of Academia Sinica, a research school in Taipei.
Chu Yiu-ming
Chu Yiu-ming was a pastor with a long history of working with the underprivileged in society. A veteran activist, he helped pro-democracy supporters in China flee amid Beijing’s crackdown in 1989, as part of Operation Yellowbird.
Conviction and sentence: Chu faced the same three charges as Tai and Chan, but was found guilty only of conspiracy to commit public nuisance. The pastor, who was 75 at the time, was handed a 16-month jail term suspended for two years. The judge said he was impressed by Chu’s commitment to social justice, adding that he opted for leniency due to his age, health and contributions to society that spanned three decades.
Where is he now? The reverend left Hong Kong for Taiwan in December 2020, according to media reports. Earlier this month, Chu and Chan hosted a sharing and book signing in Taipei for a collection of essays they contributed to. The book was published in August to mark 10 years since the movement.
Raphael Wong
Activist Raphael Wong was a vice-chairperson of pro-democracy party the League of Social Democrats (LSD) during the Umbrella Movement. During his trial, he was said to have called on protesters to block roads near the government headquarters on the first day of the protests.
Conviction and sentence: Wong was found guilty of incitement to commit public nuisance and incitement to incite public nuisance. He was the only one of the Occupy Nine to have a criminal record, having been jailed for protest-related offences before, but the judge said he would not impose a heavier sentence on account of that. Wong was jailed for eight months.
Where is he now? Wong is still in Hong Kong and still a member of the LSD, continuing to take part in small scale protests staged by the group. In May, he and other LSD activists were arrested outside the court building where the verdict in the 47 democrats case was being handed down. They were released without charge.
Wong told HKFP in September that he could never have imagined the political developments seen in Hong Kong in recent years – that the protests and unrest in 2019 would happen the way they did, or that such demonstrations would essentially be made illegal. Looking back at the Umbrella Movement, Wong said it had been neither a success nor a failure, but “had its own significance.”
Shiu Ka-chun
Shiu Ka-chun was a social work lecturer at the Hong Kong Baptist University during the Umbrella Movement. According to the judgement in the Occupy Nine case, he was among the activists to call on protesters to occupy roads near the government headquarters on the first day of the Umbrella Movement.
Conviction and sentence: Shiu was found guilty of inciting others to commit public nuisance and “incitement to incite public nuisance.” He was jailed for eight months.
Where is he now? Shiu was elected as a lawmaker as a representative of the social welfare sector in 2016. He later founded a prisoners’ rights support group focused on helping those jailed over the protests in 2019, but which shut down in the wake of Beijing’s national security law. Shiu is still in Hong Kong and continues to support prisoners’ rights. He declined to comment on the Umbrella Movement.
Tommy Cheung Sau-yin
When the 2014 protests began, Tommy Cheung Sau-yin was a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was president of the student union. He was also one of the leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
Conviction and sentence: Cheung was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance,” and was jailed for eight months.
Where is he now? The former student activist was elected as a district councillor in Yuen Long in 2019 but resigned in October 2021. Last year, journalists reported that Cheung had written an article in a patriotic publication, which said he was affiliated with the Basic Law Student Centre, under pro-Beijing company the Hong Kong Basic Law Foundation.
Cheung has also made headlines due to racking up debt and was declared bankrupt by the High Court in July.
Eason Chung
Eason Chung was a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong during the Umbrella Movement. He was also a member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
Conviction and sentence: Chung was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance.” He was jailed for eight months but sentence was suspended for two years, with the judge citing his motivation behind the offence, his age and “lack of experience in life.”
Where is he now? Chung moved to Taiwan in 2021, and to the UK in 2022, according to an essay he wrote for Taiwan media outlet The Reporter. Since March, the former student activist has been sharing his writing on social media under the handle “Yiuwa.is.writing,” where he explores topics such as travel and books.
Lee Wing-tat
A former Democratic Party lawmaker, Lee Wing-tat was a research officer during the Umbrella Movement.
Conviction and sentence: Lee was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and jailed for eight months. The judge noted that Lee had served Hong Kong through “various public offices he held for over 30 years.”
Where is he now? Lee moved to the UK in 2021, according to Points Media, a UK-based news outlet covering Hong Kong. Having retired some years ago, he supports advocacy campaigns founded by Hongkongers in the UK, including one that called on people to vote for politicians who supported Hong Kong’s pro-democracy cause during the recent UK general election. In mid-September, Lee attended a birthday gathering of Hong Kong’s last British governor Chris Patten, which was organised by NGO Hong Kong Watch.
Tanya Chan
Tanya Chan was a lawmaker with the Civic Party when the Umbrella Movement began. She is also a barrister.
Conviction and sentence: Chan was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance.” Her sentencing came about a month after the other eight in the Occupy Nine trial because she had to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumour. The judge handed Chan an eight-month jail term, suspended for two years in light of her health condition.
Where is she now? Chan announced in September 2020 that she would withdraw from politics and quit the Civic Party. Media outlets reported that she moved to Taiwan in 2021 and has taken up cooking as a hobby. Last April, a restaurant in Taipei announced that she was doing a one-day shift as a guest chef.”
As I wrote in my post of July 1 2024, This July, the 27th Anniversary of the Abandonment of Hong Kong to China and of Democracy to Tyranny; We mourn and organize resistance for the liberation of Hong Kong as a sovereign and independent nation from the imperial conquest and dominion of the loathsome Chinese Communist Party, throughout this July the twenty seventh anniversary of the abandonment of Hong Kong by Britain to a carceral state of force and control which was never a legitimate successor to the China with whom the original lease of 1898 was made, and the iconic fall of democracy to tyranny and state terror which it signifies.
On the first of July last year the despicable tyrant and criminal of violations of human rights Xi Jinping walked the streets of Hong Kong, an ambush predator wearing the face of a man which cannot conceal his intent to conquer and enslave the world, beginning with Hong Kong as a launching pad for the conquest of the Pacific Rim.
Why had he come to hold a triumphal march in imitation of Hitler in his 1940 visit to Paris; to terrify the people into submission, to claim it personally as a conqueror and imperial occupied territory, to reinforce an illusory legitimacy when all China has is fear and force? All of these things, and one thing more; this is also a marketing stunt aimed at the one partner in tyranny which can bring his regime down and liberate the peoples of both Hong Kong and China, the international business community. Send us your manufacturing jobs, he offers; we have slaves.
If we do not free Hong Kong from his talons, we will be fighting for our survival in the streets of San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle, in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, Kolkata, Bangkok, in Sydney and Melbourne, Tokyo and Yokohama, any city which is home to a community of Overseas Chinese, which the government of the Chinese Communist Party considers their own citizens, whether or not they consent to be governed by Beijing. The CCP is uninterested in consent; for a vision of the world they would bequeath to humankind, we need only look at the vast prison and slave labor camp of Xinjiang.
Let us stand in solidarity with the people of Hong Kong and of China in the cause of Liberty and a free society of equals.
When will the free nations of the world recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and take action shoulder to shoulder with its people to throw off the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party?
The Black Flag flies from the barricades in Hong Kong, and its primary meaning has not changed since its use by the First International and the veterans of the Paris Commune; freedom versus tyranny, the abolition of state terror, surveillance, and control, resistance to nationalisms of blood, faith, and soil, and abandonment of the social use of force.
With this bold signal the people declare: we shall be ruled by ourselves and no other.
Shall we be collaborators and profiteers of slave labor, or shall we stand in solidarity to cast down from their thrones all those who would enslave us?
In the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.”
As I wrote in my post of February 15 2022, Monsters, Freaks, Transgression of the Forbidden, the Sacred Wildness of Nature and the Wildness of Ourselves: On Chaos as Love and Desire; Watching the sunrise overlooking Hong Kong from Lion Rock, seized many times in recent years by democracy protesters and revolutionaries in the struggle for liberation and independence from China, in the wake of the last celebrations of Chinese New Year and several nearly sleepless nights of making mischief for tyrants under cover of the festival, my thoughts turn to the nature of freedom and the freedom of nature, of ourselves as wild and glorious things, of love and desire as anarchic forces of liberation, of transgression of the boundaries of the Forbidden and the violation of norms as seizures of power from the tyranny of other people’s ideas of virtue and the refusal to submit to authority.
Freedom, and all that comes with it; above all freedom as the wildness of nature and the wildness of ourselves, as defiance of authorized identities and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, of love and desire as liberating forces of Chaos, and all of this as sacred acts of reimagination and transformation of ourselves and the possibilities of human being, meaning, and value.
And of our myriad possible futures, sorting themselves out in our daily lives like a hurricane governed by the flight of a hummingbird; tyranny or liberty, extinction or survival.
Order and its forms as authority, power, capital, and hegemonic elites of patriarchy and racism, class and caste, which arise from the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force, which appropriates and subjugates us through falsification, commodification, and dehumanization and weaponizes hierarchies of otherness and belonging and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, and creates states as embodied violence, tyrannies of force and control, carceral states of police and military terror, and dominions of imperial conquest and colonial assimilation and exploitation; all of these systems and structures are born in fear, overwhelming and generalized fear weaponized in service to power and submission to authority, have a key weakness without which they cannot arise and perpetuate unequal power, for this requires the renunciation of love.
Chaos has as its champion the totalizing and uncontrollable divine madness of love, which leaps across all boundaries to unite us in solidarity of action against those who would enslave us.
Love exalts us beyond the limits of ourselves and the flags of our skin, disrupts authorized identities and narratives as imposed conditions of struggle, seizes power as ownership of ourselves, and reveals the embodied truth of others.
Once we have a definition of democracy as a free society of equals and a praxis of love, there are some principles which can be derived as an art of revolution and seizures of power.
Order appropriates; Chaos autonomizes.
Order is unequal power and systemic violence; Chaos is liberty, equality, interdependence, and harmony.
Order subjugates through division and hierarchy; Chaos liberates through equality and solidarity.
Authority falsifies; speaking truth to power or parrhesia as Foucault called truth telling and performing the witness of history confers authenticity to us in the sacred calling to pursue the truth, and delegitimize tyrants.
Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain. As Dorothy says to Oz, he’s just an old humbug.
The four primary Duties of a Citizen are Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.
There is no just Authority.
Law serves power and authority; transgression and refusal to submit confer freedom and self-ownership as primary acts of becoming human and Unconquered.
Always go through the Forbidden Door. As Max Stirner wrote; “Freedom cannot be granted; it must be seized.”
Such is my art of revolution and democracy as love; there remains poetic vision and the reimagination and transformation of ourselves and our limitless possibilities of becoming human, and love and desire as unconquerable informing, motivating, and shaping forces and innate human realms of being and powers which cannot be taken from us as truths immanent in nature and written in our flesh, anarchic and ungovernable as the tides, and it is love and desire as forms of wildness and embodied truth which offer us a definition of freedom as the wildness of nature and the wildness of ourselves.
As I wrote in my post of February 12 2022, Genocide Games: the Case of Hong Kong; I do not like thee, Xi Jinping; and unlike Dr Fell in the beloved poem of 1680 by Tom Brown, I both know and can tell why as a truthteller and witness of history; state terror and tyranny, carceral states of force and thought control, disappearance and torture by police, universal surveillance, and the falsification of propaganda and alternate histories, imperial conquest and colonial exploitation, slave labor and genocidal ethnic cleansing, and fascisms of blood, ideology as a faith, and soil; of all this I accuse Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
These things I am able to say because of the freedom of access to information which I enjoy as an American citizen, because the transparency of the state in America and the legal protection and heroic stature in our society of whistleblowers and truthtellers is a firewall against secret power, and because the sacred calling to pursue the truth as both a right of citizens and a universal human right are among those parallel and interdependent sets of rights of which the common defense is the primary purpose of the state.
So are legitimacy, trust, and representation conferred to any state which is a guarantor of the rights of its citizens; the corollary of this is that any state whose primary purpose is not to guarantee the rights of individuals has no such legitimacy.
We must be a democracy and a free society of equals, or the slaves of tyrants.
And this we must resist.
Why we fight: the stakes of the Hong Kong liberation struggle can be seen in the corpses of political prisoners which toured the world as the CCP’s threat of terror and atrocities to silence global dissent.
They are coming for us and for all democracy protestors with teams of assassins throughout the world, and we must come for them first and bring regime change to the Chinese Communist Party.
As written by Helen Davidson in The Guardian, in an article entitled Hong Kong: Stand News journalists given jail terms for ‘sedition’; “The former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s Stand News has been sentenced to jail on sedition charges for the publication of news reports and other articles that prosecutors said tried to promote “illegal ideologies”.
Chung Pui-kuen, 55, the former editor-in-chief and the former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam, 36, were found guilty of conspiring to publish seditious materials in late August after almost a year of delays. The parent company of the now-defunct Stand News, Best Pencil Ltd, was also convicted.
The pair have been on bail since the conviction but both spent almost a year in jail since they were arrested.
On Thursday, the district court sentenced Chung to 21 months in prison, meaning he will have to serve another 10 months. Lam was released after the judge said he had factored in his poor health and other mitigating factors, including his short time in the role overseeing the outlet. Lam’s defence team had told the court earlier that a deteriorating kidney condition meant “any mistakes or delay in treatment could endanger his life”, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
The judge, who was more than two hours late to proceedings, ordered Lam to be released immediately.
Chung and Lam were first arrested on 29 December 2021 after police raided the outlet’s newsroom. In October 2022, they pleaded not guilty. Chung chose to testify in court and spent 36 of the trial’s 57 days in the witness box and defended Stand News and its commitment to press freedom.
“The media should not self-censor but report,” Chung said. “Freedom of speech should not be restricted on the grounds of eradicating dangerous ideas, but rather it should be used to eradicate dangerous ideas.”
However, the court had found 11 articles – mostly opinion pieces – published by Stand News to be seditious. The 11 were drawn from 17 that prosecutors had said sought to promote “illegal ideologies” and to incite hatred against the governments in Hong Kong and China and the 2020 national security law. The judge found Chung responsible for publishing 10 of the offending pieces, and Lam one.
The Stand News case has been seen as a bellwether for Hong Kong’s diminishing media freedoms, and the increasing risk for journalists continuing to operate in the city. The sentencing comes a week after revelations that dozens of journalists had been harassed in a “systemic and organised attack” that included death threats and threatening letters sent to their employers, families, and landlords.
Stand News was raided six months after authorities raided and shut down the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, and arrested its founder, the media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai, as well as several executives and editors including his son. In the wake of the raids on Stand News, which also targeted the home of its news editor, Ronson Chan, the outlet removed its content from online and shut down.
The raid on Stand News prompted the independent outlet Citizen News to announce within days that it would cease operations, citing the increasingly risky media environment.
Launched in 2014, Stand News had been a significant source of news about the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the harsh crackdown by authorities, and was seen by Hongkongers as one of the city’s most credible outlets, according to surveys. Its reporters had been on the frontline of reporting protests including those that turned violent.
Its then-reporter Gwyneth Ho livestreamed her reporting from Yuen Long station as gangs attacked protesters and commuters and then the reporter herself. In 2020 Ho announced herself as a candidate for Hong Kong’s legislative elections but was later disqualified. In 2021 she was jailed for taking part in an “unofficial assembly” at a Tiananmen Square massacre vigil, and this year was convicted as one of the “Hong Kong 47” for running unofficial pre-election primaries in 2020.
A profile of Ho as an election candidate was among the 11 articles deemed seditious by the court. Others included a feature on student protests, three commentaries by the self-exiled former legislator and pro-democracy campaigner Nathan Law, and four others by veteran journalist and journalism teacher Allan Au. Au’s subjects included a piece on “new words in 2020” relating to the national security crackdown, and criticisms of the national security law and a related trial. Another article by Au accusing authorities of using the sedition law – under which the Stand News editors were convicted – as “lawfare”.
The sedition law dates back to the British colonial era and had been little used until authorities began charging pro-democracy figures with its crimes after the 2019 protests. It was repealed in March after Hong Kong introduced its own domestic national security law.”
‘I was so naive’: 10 years after Umbrella protests, Hongkongers remember China’s crackdown
HK’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, 10 years on: where are the leaders now?
HK 10th Umbrella Movement anniversary sees police deployed, barricades
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Hong Kong journalists harassed in ‘systemic and organised attack’ | Hong Kong
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2024 年 9 月 28 日雨傘革命週年紀念：香港的暴政與抵抗
今天，我們慶祝香港抵抗中國共產黨佔領十年，慶祝所有人類靈魂失去自由和平等，特別是選舉自己領導人的權利以及新聞自由和言論自由的權利，中國共產黨與英國合作進行帝國征服和統治，竊取了本應成為獨立主權國家和平等自由社會的東西。
香港或許仍能實現民主夢想，因為儘管她已被佔領，但她仍堅不可摧、不屈服。誰反抗、拒絕屈服，就變成不被征服的人，誰就自由了；因此，他也是普羅米修斯自由之火的持有者，能夠作為活的自治區讓其他人獲得自由。
正如列寧在引發俄國革命的文章中所問的那樣，必須做什麼？首先美國和自由世界必須承認香港的獨立和主權；其次，我們和我們的盟友必須對與中國大陸的所有貿易和製造業實施全面抵制、剝離和製裁，直到佔領軍撤離。
我們應該成為奴隸勞動的合作者和奸商，還是應該團結一致，將所有那些奴役我們的人從他們的寶座上推翻？
中國國歌的歌詞是：“不願為奴的人起來吧。”
2024 年 7 月 1 日 香港回歸中國、民主淪為暴政 27 週年
今年七月是英國將香港拋棄為監獄狀態二十六週年，我們哀悼並組織抵抗活動，爭取將香港作為一個主權和獨立國家從可惡的中國共產黨的帝國征服和統治下解放出來。 武力和控制從來都不是1898年最初簽訂租約的中國的合法繼承者，而且它所象徵的民主制度標誌性地淪為暴政和國家恐怖。
去年7月1日，卑鄙的暴君、侵犯人權的罪犯習近平走在香港街頭，他是一個伏擊的掠奪者，臉上掩飾不住他征服和奴役世界的意圖，首先是香港 金剛作為征服環太平洋的跳板。
1940年他訪問巴黎時為何要效仿希特勒來舉行凱旋遊行？ 恐嚇人民屈服，親自宣稱自己是征服者和帝國占領的領土，在中國祇有恐懼和武力的情況下強化虛幻的合法性？ 所有這些事情，還有一件事； 這也是一種營銷噱頭，針對的是暴政中的一個夥伴，可以推翻他的政權並解放香港和中國人民以及國際商界。 他提出，請將您的製造業工作崗位發送給我們； 我們有奴隸。
如果我們不把香港從他的魔爪下解放出來，我們將在舊金山、聖地亞哥、西雅圖、新加坡、吉隆坡、雅加達、馬尼拉、加爾各答、曼谷、悉尼和墨爾本的街頭為生存而戰， 東京和橫濱，任何一個擁有海外華人社區的城市，中國共產黨政府都將其視為自己的公民，無論他們是否同意接受北京的統治。 中共對同意不感興趣； 我們只需看看新疆巨大的監獄和勞改營，就能看到他們留給人類的世界願景。
讓我們與香港和中國人民團結一致，爭取自由和平等的自由社會。
世界自由國家何時才能承認香港的獨立和主權，並與香港人民並肩行動，推翻中共的暴政？
黑旗從香港的路障中飄揚，自第一國際和巴黎公社老兵使用以來，它的主要含義一直沒有改變； 自由對抗暴政，廢除國家恐怖、監視和控制，抵制血腥、信仰和土地的民族主義，以及放棄社會使用武力。
人們用這個大膽的信號宣告：我們將不受任何人統治。
我們應該成為奴隸勞動的合作者和奸商，還是應該團結一致，將所有那些奴役我們的人從他們的寶座上推翻？
中國國歌的歌詞是：“不願為奴的人起來吧。”
正如我在 2022 年 2 月 15 日的文章《怪物、怪胎、違禁、自然的神聖野性和我們自己的野性：論作為愛與慾望的混沌》中所寫的那樣； 近年來，在中國新年的最後一次慶祝活動和幾個近乎不眠之夜的惡作劇之後，民主抗議者和革命者在爭取從中國解放和獨立的鬥爭中多次佔領獅子山，俯瞰香港的日出 對於在節日掩護下的暴君，我的思想轉向自由的本質和自然的自由，我們自己是狂野而光榮的事物，愛和慾望是無政府主義的解放力量，是對禁忌和世界界限的侵犯。 違反規範是從他人的美德觀念的暴政和拒絕服從權威中奪取權力。
自由，以及隨之而來的一切； 首先，自由是自然的野性和我們自己的野性，是對血統、信仰和土壤的授權身份和法西斯主義的蔑視，是愛和慾望的解放混沌力量，而所有這一切都是重新想像和轉變的神聖行為 我們自己以及人類的可能性、意義和價值。
以及我們無數可能的未來，它們在我們的日常生活中自行整理，就像蜂鳥飛行控制的颶風一樣； 暴政或自由，滅絕或生存。
秩序及其形式，如父權制和種族主義、階級和種姓的權威、權力、資本和霸權精英，它們產生於瓦格納式的恐懼、權力和武力之環，它通過偽造、商品化和非人化和非人化來侵占和征服我們。 將差異性和歸屬感的等級制度以及血統、信仰和土壤的法西斯主義武器化，並創建國家作為嵌入
令人厭惡的暴力、武力和控制的暴政、警察和軍事恐怖的監禁國家、帝國征服和殖民同化和剝削的統治； 所有這些系統和結構都誕生於恐懼之中，壓倒性和普遍性的恐懼被武器化，以服務於權力和服從權威，它們都有一個關鍵的弱點，沒有這個弱點，它們就無法產生並維持不平等的權力，因為這需要放棄愛。
混沌以愛的全面且無法控制的神聖瘋狂作為它的捍衛者，它跨越了所有界限，將我們團結起來，採取團結一致的行動，反對那些奴役我們的人。
愛使我們超越自我和皮膚的界限，打破作為強加的鬥爭條件的授權身份和敘述，奪取權力作為我們自己的所有權，並揭示他人的具體真相。
一旦我們將民主定義為平等的自由社會和愛的實踐，就可以衍生出一些原則作為革命和奪取權力的藝術。
訂單適當； 混沌自治。
秩序是不平等的權力和系統性的暴力； 混沌就是自由、平等、相互依存、和諧。
秩序通過劃分和等級制來征服； 混亂通過平等和團結來解放。
權威造假； 福柯所謂的“講真話”和“歷史見證”向權力說真話或直言，賦予我們追求真理、剝奪暴君合法性的神聖使命的真實性。
時刻關注幕後的人。 正如多蘿西對奧茲所說，他只是一個老騙子。
公民的四個主要職責是質疑權威、揭露權威、模擬權威和挑戰權威。
不存在公正的權威。
法律服務於權力和權威； 越界和拒絕屈服賦予自由和自我所有權，作為成為人類和不被征服的主要行為。
永遠要經過禁門。 正如馬克斯·施蒂納所寫； “自由不能被授予； 必須抓住它。”
這就是我的革命和民主的藝術——愛； 仍然存在著詩意的願景、對我們自己的重新想像和轉變，以及我們成為人類的無限可能性，而愛和慾望是不可征服的信息、激勵和塑造力量，以及人類固有的存在領域和力量，它們不能作為內在的真理從我們手中奪走。 愛和慾望是野性的形式，是真理的體現，它為我們提供了自由的定義，即自然的野性和我們自己的野性。
正如我在 2022 年 2 月 12 日的文章《種族滅絕遊戲：香港案例》中所寫。 我不喜歡你，習近平； 與湯姆·布朗 (Tom Brown) 1680 年受人喜愛的詩中的菲爾博士 (Dr Fell) 不同，作為一個說真話的人和歷史的見證者，我既知道也能說出原因； 國家恐怖和暴政、武力和思想控制的監獄國家、警察的失踪和酷刑、普遍監視、偽造宣傳和虛構歷史、帝國征服和殖民剝削、奴役和種族滅絕種族清洗、血腥法西斯主義、意識形態 作為信仰，作為土壤； 這一切我都指責習近平和中國共產黨。
我之所以能夠說出這些話，是因為我作為一名美國公民享有獲取信息的自由，因為美國國家的透明度以及舉報人和說真話者在我們社會中的法律保護和英雄地位是防止秘密的防火牆 權力，因為追求真理的神聖使命既是公民的權利，又是普遍的人權，屬於平行且相互依存的一系列權利，而共同捍衛這些權利是國家的首要目的。
任何作為其公民權利保障者的國家都被賦予合法性、信任和代表權。 由此推論，任何主要目的不是保障個人權利的國家都不具有這種合法性。
我們必須是平等的民主和自由社會，否則就是暴君的奴隸。
我們必須抵制這一點。
Here follow some of my essays on the subject of the Fall of Hong Kong:
July 2 2019 Riots on Anniversary of the Fall of Hong Kong to the Chinese Communists
As over half a million citizens of Hong Kong flooded the streets Monday on the anniversary of the sale of their nation by Britain to the Chinese Communist Party, and to the cruelty and brutal terror with which the Communist forces of occupation have met demands for democracy and independence, including the horrific organ harvesting of political prisoners, Trump shook hands on a trade deal with the tyrant of Beijing and signaled clearly that in the fight for freedom and the Rights of Man the people of Hong Kong are on their own.
Trump’s policy of appeasement to tyranny cannot succeed in the long run, any more than it did to safeguard Europe from Hitler. Of course, his is not the cause of freedom.
The figment of China as a Great Lie of the Chinese Communist Party, claiming both legitimacy and domination over its historical peoples and territories as a fictive illusion, including what they call Overseas Chinese, which means all persons of Chinese ancestry everywhere, a fascist regime of blood and soil no different from that of the Axis powers, this nightmare of an evil and predatory China, the dark mirror of bright Hong Kong as a shining beacon of hope, must not be allowed to consume the world.
We must liberate and defend the freedom of Hong Kong, and deny the Communists their first victory in the conquest of the Pacific and its sovereign nations. For Hong Kong is the gateway to the civilizations of the Pacific Rim, the Philippine Islands (I know our leaders have had their differences, but my uncle is a Bataan Death March survivor and I would honor his service by standing with you in defence of freedom) and then Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, until we are fighting in the streets of San Francisco. We must stop the conquest in Hong Kong, where the people are in revolt for independence, and while our allies yet stand.
Liberate Hong Kong, and the conquest of the Pacific by the Chinese Communist Party vanishes from our future history like the distorted images in funhouse mirrors.
August 19 2019, Weekend Eleven of Hong Kong’s Democracy Revolution: a Quarter of the City Defy the Imperial Conquest of Beijing
In a stunning display of fearlessness and solidarity, a quarter of the people of Hong Kong, one million seven hundred thousand of its citizens, defy the communists and the brutal totalitarian police state of Beijing to march for democracy, freedom, and the universal rights to which every human being is entitled.
The revolution against communism and the struggle to liberate Hong Kong from the unjust and imperialist rule of the mainland government and the torture, surveillance, and xenophobic racist ethnic cleansing which the Chinese Communist Party and its tyranny of faceless bureaucrats represents is now too large to crush through its usual means of abductions, secret trials, re-education camps, and the use of criminal gangs as enforcers.
A quarter of the population cannot be murdered and terrorized in secret, without the true nature of the Communist Party being revealed; a vast system of slave labor for the benefit of a plutocratic elite no different from the aristocratic mandarinate the communists themselves rebelled against a hundred years ago.
The true origin of the Chinese Communist Party which now exists is the Loyalty Purge and Massacre of the Jiangxi Soviet of 1930-31, in which Mao killed three out of four of the communists, some one hundred thousand people, all who were not personally loyal to him, and seized absolute control.
Then of course there was World War Two, during which the CCP used the Japanese army as a proxy force against their own pro-democracy enemies and fellow Chinese, and against bastions of freedom protected by foreigners such as Hong Kong.
After 90 years of tyranny, the people of China are fighting back; it’s time for the free nations of the world to help them liberate themselves, and to recognize the independence of Hong Kong.
October 1 2019 China’s Bloody Day: the liberation of Hong Kong has its first martyr in Tsang Chi-kin
On the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s seizure of power, the forces of state terror were once again loosed upon its citizens in a brutal repression of mass democracy protests, resulting in the police shooting of a teenager, Tsang Chi-kin.
History will remember him as the first martyr of the liberation of Hong Kong from the imperialism and tyranny of communism. From this day forward the first of October will be known as China’s Bloody Day.
The CCP is following the playbook of their former proxy forces against democracy and human rights, which they used to defeat the democratic government of China and successor state to that of the visionary Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek which escaped to Taiwan, and to isolate Chinese democracy from support by driving out the British and other foreign guarantors of liberty and the rights of man; that proxy and plan being the Imperial Japanese conquest of Asia and the Pacific.
After Hong Kong, Singapore and control of the South China Sea will be the next front, and then Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia, where they will enact a campaign of de-Islamification and ethnic cleansing of non-Chinese populations as being tested now in Xinjiang. They already control a third of India, waging a long Maoist revolution whose goal is dominion of the subcontinent; if you don’t think they can do it, just look at Nepal.
Any government which has gamed this out to its logical conclusion about fifty years from now should be terrified; the CCP has long insisted that all Overseas Chinese, persons of Chinese ancestry everywhere, are subject to their military draft, and in matters of law the CCP has first claim on them over any other government. When the communists have the power to annex and occupy any city with a Chinatown, they will do exactly that.
The liberation of Hong Kong will guarantee freedom and universal human rights not only for itself, but for the whole world as a balance point of history. We must help Hong Kong win free of communist imperialism, and reverse the tides of time which are driving forward the Chinese Communist Party’s conquest of the world
October 6 2019 Vendetta lives: Hong Kong Defies the Occupation
In a bold and united rebuke of the authoritarian imperialism of the Chinese Communist Party, the people of Hong Kong defy the mask ban wearing a new symbol of their revolution, the mask of the figure of the rebel Vendetta from the great film. It is a provocative image for the freedom fighters of Hong Kong, with a long history of use by the Anonymous network in combating tyranny and state control and surveillance.
The next step will or may be to break that power through direct attack of the control systems employed by the government in Beijing to dehumanize and subjugate their peoples, including massive and pervasive face recognition and the social credit system. If Hong Kong can defeat the means of control being tested against the Uighur minority of Xinjiang and stop the campaign of ethnic cleansing, they may liberate China as well as themselves and stop the communist party’s conquest of the Pacific and South Asia and their dominion over the world.
And the free nations of the world can help by recognition of the sovereignty of Hong Kong and safeguarding her independence from the force and influence of the CCP.
I am one man, of limited understanding, though I have worn many masks in many places, and not all of my causes have been lost; through all my forlorn hopes and a lifetime of last stands I yet remain to defy and defend.
Of our many possible futures I can only say this; all is not yet lost, nor is anything past redemption when the will to resist and to become can be found.
So I leave you with the words of Alan Moore from V for Vendetta; “Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.”
December 16 2019 Hong Kong’s democracy revolution: a Children’s Crusade
Hear the voices and testimony of the innocent in Hong Kong’s struggle for independence; a Children’s Crusade which opposes evil with a fearless and united voice declaiming; No!
This is the crucible in which nations are born; in the dreams of liberty of its children and of those with nothing left to lose, willing to risk their lives to reach for a better future. Hong Kong is discovering its identity as a nation and a people under the occupation of a Chinese Communist Party no less terrible than that of Imperial Japan from December 25 1941 until liberation on August 30 1945.
In many ways the methods of state terror and control are parallel between Fascist Japan and Communist China and suggestive of a master-disciple relationship as with serial killers. For example, the Japanese Imperial Army had mobile processing factories whereby Chinese persons killed in the conquest were cannibalized, which accounts for the speed with which the Imperial Army could move without outrunning its supply lines, a terror operation which became the model for the Chinese Communist Party, which used Imperial Japan as a tool for ridding themselves of the British and pro-democracy Chinese Nationalists, in the use of organ harvesting of democracy activists which they employ today.
As with the cannibalism of their former secret partners against democracy, the horrific terror and refined social control of the Chinese Communist Party, whether directed against the economic prize of Hong Kong or ethnic minorities such as those in Tibet and Xinjiang, methods of repression, force, and intimidation fail to convince, and in fact recruit membership for the resistance. China should have learned this from the Rape of Nanking; far from being brutalized into passivity, survivors of terror will gladly die if in doing so they can claim vengeance on an enemy.
And the family and friends of every person in Hong Kong whom the Communists in Beijing abduct and imprison, shoot or beat to death in the streets, torture, and assassinate, will awaken to a new day with solidarity in the common cause of liberty and a vast network of alliances forged by the inhumanity of a violent and evil authoritarian enemy.
In the long run, resistance and revolution always win because tyranny creates its own counterforce and downfall.
As Verna Yu writes in The Guardian; “Officials said as of 5 December, of the 5,980 people arrested since the movement started in June, 2,383 or 40% were students and 367 of them have been charged. Among them, 939 were under 18, with the youngest being only 11, and 106 have been charged. Suspects have been arrested for a range of offences including rioting, unlawful assembly, assaulting police officers and possessing offensive weapons.”
How wonderful that someone somewhere has an education system teaching its next generation of leaders how to question and challenge unjust authority.
“James, 13, and Roderick, 16, from elite schools and middle-class families, are among the youngest people to have been charged over the protests. They were arrested in a protest shortly after others had thrown molotov cocktails – a scene that would be defined as a “riot” under Hong Kong law.”
“They said an incident on 21 July when thugs indiscriminately attacked passengers at the out-of-town metro station while police were nowhere to be seen had led to a breakdown of their trust in the authorities. After that, they went to the frontline of the protests, braving teargas and confrontations with police.”
“The teenagers said the police’s escalating use of force – including more than 16,000 canisters of teargas, water cannon, 10,000 rubber bullets and live rounds – and the authorities’ refusal to investigate police’s abuse of power were what prompted them to take part in the increasingly violent protests. They see protesters’ attacks on riot police as justified because they can no longer trust the police to deliver justice.
“We don’t attack unless we’re attacked,” James, a 13 year old said. “We can’t just stand there and not do a thing.”
“Both boys carried wills when they went out to protest. “I was always scared – whether I would get shot, get arrested or even lose my life. But if we don’t come out because we’re afraid, there would be even fewer people out there,” James said.
“I really want to give all I have to Hong Kong,” the 13-year-old said, his eyes welling up in tears. “When you pursue freedom, sacrifices are unavoidable. “We are halfway into the gate of hell. We’ve put our future and career on a line, but it is worth it.”
https://time.com/5689617/hong-kong-protest-china-national-day-october-1/
January 8 2020 Let Anarchy Reign: Waves of liberation actions hammer the communist occupation of Hong Kong: massive freedom protests on Christmas and New Year’s Days
Sustained and relentless waves of liberation actions continue to hammer the Communist occupation of Hong Kong with massive protests on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
When will the free nations of the world recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and take action shoulder to shoulder with its people to throw off the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party?
The Black Flag flies from the barricades in Hong Kong, and its primary meaning has not changed since its use by the First International and the veterans of the Paris Commune; freedom versus tyranny, the abolition of state terror, surveillance, and control, resistance to nationalisms of blood, faith, and soil, and abandonment of the social use of force.
With this bold signal the people declare: we shall be ruled by none.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/01/new-years-day-rally-hong-kong?CMP=share_btn_link
January 18 2020 Hong Kong’s often imprisoned democracy activist Joshua Wong speaks
How we must cherish and defend the principle of free speech, without which there is no liberty.
In Hong Kong under the heel of the Chinese Communist Party’s occupation of state terror and control, as in so many tyrannies throughout our world, thought crimes are punished more severely than any other, for no tyranny can abide defiance. Xi Jinping, tyrant of Beijing, can permit challenge to his authority no more than any other, for truth is not on his side nor can his regime long survive where it flourishes.
Tyranny may have horrific instruments of terror and repression at its command; in China today this includes the abduction of its critics and dissenters, the harvesting of their organs and immurement in concentration camps, torture and genocide and universal constant surveillance, but such force is brittle and hollow. It may be shattered and proven meaningless by anyone willing to defy it regardless of the costs.
And so heroes like Joshua Wong are vital rallying points and examples, for he has called out the emperor who has no clothes, withstood his punishments and returned unconquered to fight again. The fact that China dared not torture or kill him while in prison is a sign that the occupation is weakening; only two years ago the Chinese Communist Party paraded before the world the carcasses of its victims on a world tour of the Real Bodies Exhibition, which you can read further about here:
We have come far from this provocation and arrogance by the government of Beijing, from this brazen display of power intended to dehumanize and humiliate its political opponents and openly threaten America and Europe into submission as it seeks a stranglehold on the Pacific Rim and South Asia.
And for the recessive tide of its cruelty and barbarism before the eyes of the world we offer thanks and celebrate the courageous and unconquerable people of Hong Kong, and champions of liberty like Joshua Wong.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/18/unfree-speech-joshua-wong-extract
May 23 2020 We Must Bring the Fight for the Liberation of Hong Kong to the Streets of Beijing
Now is the moment to seize the initiative, when the naked greed and brutal tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party is revealed before the world, while the legitimacy of Xi Jinping’s regime of xenophobic ethnic cleansing and bureaucratic culture of silence has been discredited by loosing the Doom of Man Pandemic on us all to destabilize our global economic and political structures and systems and to prepare the way for the CCP’s conquest and dominion of the world, while their true intentions and plans toward us all lay revealed in the state terror and control of minorities in Xinjiang and their disregard of law in Hong Kong.
How may we help the people of Hong Kong resist occupation and brutal repression? We must fight the occupation of Hong Kong on three fronts:
On the diplomatic front by recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and aiding its people to fully seize control of their own destiny through the establishment of a democracy wherein the autonomy of individuals and the sacrosanct status of universal human rights is paramount.
On the economic front through a policy of isolation of the Chinese Communist Party to include Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction of all trade and manufacture with mainland China, and the suspension of all debt, until the CCP recognizes the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and other occupied foreign nations and subject peoples and withdraws all official and military presence from these and from the archipelago of artificial islands they have constructed as military bases in the South China Sea which threaten free shipping and their neighboring states.
On the third front of any revolutionary struggle, that of direct action which is internal to and wholly owned by the people themselves and their legitimate representatives, as distinct from the actions of free sister governments as guarantors of universal human rights, we must act in solidarity as a united front of humankind and do everything in our power to help them secure their freedom and put into their hands the resources necessary to liberate themselves.
Let all those who love liberty join together to resist tyranny wherever it may arise to enslave us through state force and control.
We must bring the fight for the Liberation of Hong Kong to the streets of Beijing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jul/01/hong-kong-protests-china-security-law-carrie-lam
October 5 2020 Occupation and Exile: Hong Kong
As the iron talons of the Chinese Communist Party close upon their prize conquest of Hong Kong, eager to batten onto the legacy of wealth and influence generations of freedom has built, they begin to kill the thing they most desire, hammering dissent and a free market of ideas which they cannot swallow and survive with brutal repression, revealed before the world as a tyranny of state terror and thought control; for this is a golden egg which cannot be extracted from its goose without destroying it.
The unrivaled trading and financial power of Hong Kong emerges from its innovation and traditions of open intellectual research and debate; democracy and universal human rights, among them being the sacrosanct nature of pursuit of the truth and of scientific and academic discovery. Send forces of occupation and political control to repress freedom of thought and the self-ownership of autonomous individuals, and the state annihilates the conditions which made their conquest valuable. Let them continue, and that conquest will utterly transform its conqueror with its alien Enlightenment values and ideals. Such is the dilemma which now confronts the CCP; the one which confronts the world is that we must intervene to liberate Hong Kong now while our options still include those other than war.
Xi Jinping’s Communist government, which squats upon mainland China like a miasma of contagion and darkness, as xenophobic as any fascist military dictatorship, as authoritarian as any feudal monarchy of the divine right of kings, and eyeing its neighbors hungrily as an imperial power with designs upon the liberty of any Chinese person anywhere and on the cities which they inhabit as future conquests, remains a threat not only to Hong Kong, but to all humankind.
As I wrote in my post of February 3; “In this the Chinese Communist Party follows the First Rule of Tyranny; When the state’s absolute monopoly on power is in doubt, kill everyone not personally loyal to you. This aphorism, not included in the public version of the Red Book, was put into practice by Mao when he seized totalitarian control of the CCP during the Jiangxi Soviet Massacre in 1935 by killing three out of four of its members, the true origin of the Chinese Communist Party as it exists today as a structure of state terror and thought control.”
Shall we be collaborators and profiteers of slave labor, or shall we stand in solidarity to cast down from their thrones all those who would enslave us?
In the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.”
July 1 2021 Anniversary of the Fall of Hong Kong
As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates one hundred year anniversary of in founding in Shanghai in 1921 with military displays and belligerent threats to her neighbors, Hong Kong mourns the twenty fourth anniversary of her abandonment by Britain to China and the second anniversary of its democracy movement born of Xi Jinping’s rapacious and brutal conquest and repression of liberty.
I swear this now before the world and on the stage of history; I will never abandon the people of Hong Kong, nor of China. If this sounds personal, its because it is.
I am a bicultural person in my origins, raised from the age of nine to that of nineteen in part within traditional Chinese culture, and these were the first people whom I recognized as my extended family, though as languages are a hobby of mine and I have lived as a member of many different cultures in the years since my sense of continuity through others has broadened to include all humankind on principle. Yet I feel a kinship with Chinese peoples as a legacy of my childhood, and I owe them for their laughter and inclusion when I was young and needed a space of belonging, and I will restore that balance as I am able.
The Black Flag still flies from the barricades in Hong Kong where we raised it on New Year’s Day in 2020, and its primary meaning has not changed since its use by the First International and the veterans of the Paris Commune; freedom versus tyranny, the abolition of state terror, surveillance, and control, and resistance to fascisms of blood, faith, and soil,
With this bold signal the people declare: We have no masters; we shall be ruled by none.
As written in the Washington Post by David Crawshaw, Alicia Chen and Claire Parker; “China warns enemies of ‘heads bashed bloody’ on Chinese Communist Party’s centenary.
Xi Jinping has changed his tone. China’s leader, just weeks after urging his nationalistic “wolf warrior” diplomats to play nice, hit out Thursday at unspecified “foreign forces” and said any external attempts to subjugate the country would result in “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.”
In a speech to thousands of people in Beijing to mark 100 years since the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, Xi hailed the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” under the party’s guidance. He declared that the party had achieved its centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society and solved the problem of absolute poverty, adding that nothing could divide the party and the nation.
The speech comes as Xi’s China finds itself locked in an intensifying rivalry with the United States and facing pushback against its assertive actions in the region and beyond. In a blunt message to Taiwan and its allies, Xi underscored China’s commitment to one day bring the island under Beijing’s control and vowed “resolute action” against any efforts toward what he called “Taiwan independence.”
At the same time, Beijing has faced escalating criticism over its human rights abuses, especially against Uyghur Muslims in its far-western Xinjiang region, and its dismantling of freedoms in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong also marked two anniversaries this week. Thursday was the 24th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule. But the occasion, normally a day of protest, was conspicuously muted. A year ago on Wednesday, China passed a sweeping national security law that gave Beijing the legal ammunition to effectively criminalize dissent in the territory. Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who is now in jail, described it at the time as “the end of Hong Kong that the world knew before.”
In the year since, its critics have seen their fears materialize as China used the threat of punishment under the law to further cement its grip on the territory.
Since Xi took over the CCP’s top job in 2012, he has repeatedly meddled with Hong Kong’s special status. After opposition to an extradition bill birthed a major protest movement in the territory in 2019, Chinese and Hong Kong authorities argued the national security law was necessary to return “stability.”
If quashing protests was the goal, it has largely succeeded. Under the new rules, a maximum life sentence can be handed out to anyone found guilty of “separatism,” “subversion,” “terrorism” or “collusion with foreign forces.” Acts previously protected as free speech could now fall under these categories. And the legislation has allowed Chinese authorities to increase their control over Hong Kong institutions and law enforcement.
More than 100 people have been arrested under the law over the past year. Some were detained for helping to facilitate a primary vote in July 2020 to pick pro-democracy candidates to run in elections scheduled for September. The elections were ultimately postponed, and many of the pro-democracy candidates were barred from running. Journalists and publishers, meanwhile, have found themselves and their work under threat. Under pressure, the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily shut down operations last week.
“From politics to culture, education to media, the law has infected every part of Hong Kong society and fomented a climate of fear that forces residents to think twice about what they say, what they tweet and how they live their lives,” Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said in a press release this week.
The draconian rules have fueled an exodus of Hong Kong people to Britain, Canada, Taiwan and elsewhere. For those who remain, Beijing is using the law to rewrite history and push for a new generation of obedient subjects.
A Pew Research Center survey published this week revealed overwhelmingly unfavorable opinions of China among developed countries. But Xi, 68, indicated he would not be swayed.
“The Chinese people have never bullied, oppressed, or enslaved the people of other countries,” he said. “At the same time, the Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
“Heads bashed bloody” became a trending topic on the social media platform Weibo on Thursday, with more than 900 million views.
Thursday’s celebration at Tiananmen Square, which included a military flyover, 100-gun salute and patriotic songs, capped weeks of pageantry and nationalistic displays in the lead-up to the ruling party’s 100th anniversary.
The Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in 1921. It won victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 — ousting the nationalist Kuomintang, which fled to Taiwan — and has ruled the country ever since, often with an iron fist.
In the speech, Xi reiterated that it was the party’s “historic mission” to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. China has sharply ramped up military incursions into Taiwanese airspace in recent months, leading some analysts to warn of the potential for military conflict, perhaps even a Chinese invasion of the democratic island. Along with Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, the Taiwan dispute is a major flash point in the region.
Xi, who has eliminated limits on his time in office, has presided over steady economic growth and a rise in living standards since he took power. But his tenure has been marked by the rollout of a vast surveillance state in which citizens are tracked closely by the government and dissent is crushed.
The country’s economy — the world’s second-largest — has rebounded quickly from the coronavirus outbreak, with the World Bank forecasting growth of 8.5 percent this year. But China also faces many challenges, not least the demographic dual hit of a low birthrate and an aging population.
China’s diplomats have been increasingly aggressive in pushing back at Western criticism, often via social media platforms that Beijing blocks its citizens from using. But this forceful “wolf warrior” approach — named after a patriotic Chinese action film franchise — has rankled outsiders and has been cited as a key factor in Beijing’s diminished global image.
Torch of Liberty 