Hong Kong....Occupy Central Demonstrations....

xiabonan · Oct 3, 2014

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Hong Kong student protesters call off talks with govt

This is quite an interesting article I urge you guys to read it.

It shows the thug, it also gives an account of ordinary people's feelings.

What I can infer now is that there are thugs, but thugs are there because it is messy, it is chaotic. It would be a mistake if the pro-democracy call anyone and everyone play opposes them "thugs"--because certainly not everyone is one. There are people who's truly unhappy about it.

Oh, another thing I want to bring up is this: being young, or being in high school, should not be treated differently.

Here in Singapore's schools, the day you enter secondary school (around 12 years old) you'll be called young adults. When you enter Junior College which is the equivalent of high school (11th and 12th grade of high school), you're mostly treated like an adult. Teachers no longer force you to study, monitor your progress closely, or punish you if homework is not done. They trust you that as an intelligent young man/woman, you know the importance of studying.

Also, at the age of 18, all local boys will have to serve compulsory National Service (serve the army).

In fact HK is the only place out of the Four Asian Tigers where young boys do not have to do that, on a side note.

So if at the age of 18 your country and your people entrust you the responsibility of defending the nation in an event of war where blood is shed and lives are lost, I don't see how students of the same age participating in a protest should be favoured as compared to, say, a 30-year-old, when something happened to them.

I'm 19 this year and I'm leaving school soon. If I were to commit myself to a cause, I will make sure that I fully understand what are the possible consequences and be mentally and physically prepared to meet that consequence.

Being young does not guarantee different treatment or sympathy. That's still along the thinking "oh they're still students and kids why should they go through this?". That's still not treating us like real adults--though in many ways we are not, but in this regard I think we should be treated the same and equal.

Brumby · Oct 3, 2014

shen said:
Is this kid really the mastermind behind HK protest?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

I don't know enough about the background of the Scholarism movement (reminds me of Scholasticism), but I can't shake the feeling that they are a front for more powerful forces. If that's the case, it is a very cynical move to put these young kids in harms way just to gain public sympathy.

They represent the conscience of society. The idealism and purity before it gets tainted in life. They represent the voice to a society that has gone off track. The frog that is in slow boiling water that doesn't realise it.

xiabonan · Oct 3, 2014

Brumby said:
They represent the conscience of society. The idealism and purity before it gets tainted in life. They represent the voice to a society that has gone off track. The frog that is in slow boiling water that doesn't realise it.

That Joshua's hair is really driving me bananas.

Quite surprised that HK high schools do not have rules regarding hair cuts/styles.

shen · Oct 3, 2014

Brumby said:
They represent the conscience of society. The idealism and purity before it gets tainted in life. They represent the voice to a society that has gone off track. The frog that is in slow boiling water that doesn't realise it.

right, nice slogans. now let's get back to the real world. idealism and purity is all good, but if not tempered with the experiences, they dangerous. why do you think groups around the world like to use child soldiers? they are idealistic and easily manipulated.
watch some videos of Joshua's speeches. this is what he reminds of. Joshua started protesting at age 15! his parents are on the record for saying they are proud of their son getting arrested. How many of you would let your 15 year old participate in potentially violent street protests? especially if the parents are not going to be there themselves!

[video=youtube;OZTcYKwnehY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZTcYKwnehY[/video]

xiabonan · Oct 3, 2014

I want to share a piece of commentary posted on Peoples' Daily, Chinese version not Eng/Int version. It's today's paper.

I spend a lot of time translating this piece word to word, trying my best to keep it to its original flavour without any exaggeration and simplification. I find it very well written and coincides with my point of view. Hence I strongly recommend it to you guys.

Determined to safeguard the rule of law in Hong Kong

Democracy is closely tied to the rule of law. Democracy without the rule of law can only bring chaos. In recent days, a Hong Kong’s minority extremist groups initiated the “Occupy Central” movement under the name of requesting for “true direct elections”, resulting in traffic jams, schools idling, shops closing doors, falling number of tourists, and declining stock market. These consequences have already worried and angered the masses of Hong Kong’s citizens.

The so-called “Occupy Central”, is in its nature to pursue political agendas that are against the Basic Law using illegal means. No matter how “OC” organizers or campaigners paint it, “civil disobedience” or “peace” or “non-violence”, the illegal nature of “OC” cannot be changed. The definite result is damages to the rule of law, severely disrupting social order, causing great economic losses, and may even result in casualties.

One of the core content of rule of law is that any law is to be followed and that any breach of law is to be punished. In a legal society like Hong Kong, no one can neglect the law. There can be no exceptions under the law, not even young students. The handling of “OC” by the police of Hong Kong is the necessary requirement to safeguard the rule of law. When demonstrators refuse to listen to warnings, charge at police lines, or even poke police officers with umbrellas, when all other measures fail to stop them, Hong Kong police were forced to use tear gases. Hong Kong’s police force possess excellent professional traits, and the measures they have employed are necessary, reasonable, moderate. Their actions of policing should come under no condemnation.

Using legal means to handle illegal actions and activities is the best safeguard to the rule of law, and it is also a strong defense of democracy. A democratic society need to respect the opinions of the minority, but this does not mean that the minority can take on illegal means. A society that is ruled by law needs to tolerate different voices, but this doesn’t mean that law breakers will be spared. Only by using democratic ways to develop democracy, by using means of the law to safeguard the rule of law, are we able to ensure that the expressing of opinions and the exercising of power adhere to institutional tracks, to ensure that Hong Kong’s democracy embark on a path of virtuous development. Only so, are we able to improve the welfare of citizens, and ensure Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and security and safety in the long term. As for the extreme minority who wants to initiate a “colour revolution" in the mainland using Hong Kong as a jump board, it is pure daydreaming.

The rule of law is one of the core values of Hong Kong society. All along, the spirit of the rule of law displayed by Hong Kong and her citizens were role models for many, this image cannot be tarnished by only a minority. It is only possible for democracy and the rule of law to blossom by expressing wants and achieving common understanding within the legal framework. Eliminate the angst, pick up rationality once again, put down biases, and return to the rule of law, is the common responsibility of all residents who truly love Hong Kong.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Brumby · Oct 3, 2014

shen said:
right, nice slogans. now let's get back to the real world. idealism and purity is all good, but if not tempered with the experiences, they dangerous. why do you think groups around the world like to use child soldiers? they are idealistic and easily manipulated.

I don't think child soldiers are manipulated. They either get on board or get a bullet. Yours is a fallacy of equivocation.

shen said:
watch some videos of Joshua's speeches. this is what he reminds of. Joshua started protesting at age 15! his parents are on the record for saying they are proud of their son getting arrested. How many of you would let your 15 year old participate in potentially violent street protests? especially if the parents are not going to be there themselves!

It is a primary case of selective disclosure to manipulate a narrative to suit your agenda.

This is the actual quote
"We have always brought up Joshua to be compassionate, caring, principled and loyal," Wong's parents wrote in a joint statement after their son had spent 25 hours in police custody, "and we are very proud of all that he is doing to make Hong Kong a better place for his generation, and our generation."

They are proud of what he is doing for the betterment of his society and not that he is getting arrested. You can disagree with his approach but you are not entitled to the facts.

SinoSoldier · Oct 3, 2014

airsuperiority said:
sigh well-said, but if only that can happen. the police no longer cares anymore. they are letting the thugs take care of the mess now. and if you consider how many times they closed dialogue, closed off streets, and did all sorts of things to prevent the assembly from properly taking its course, you will understand whats going on.

all i wish for now is for this to be over and the students to get home safe.

Airsuperiority, do you have access to the locations of the protest; if so, what is the severity/extent of the protest? There are very conflicting photo essays regarding the matter on the Internet, with some stating that it has been exceptionally peaceful and others declaring it as some sort of violent riot.

shen · Oct 3, 2014

Brumby said:
I don't think child soldiers are manipulated. They either get on board or get a bullet. Yours is a fallacy of equivocation.

You know that's not true. You think someone is pointing a gun at the head of that Hamas child solider in the video I linked? How about this?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Fact is there are groups willing to exploit the innocence of children for their political gains. They use innocence as a propaganda tool.

It is a primary case of selective disclosure to manipulate a narrative to suit your agenda.

This is the actual quote
"We have always brought up Joshua to be compassionate, caring, principled and loyal," Wong's parents wrote in a joint statement after their son had spent 25 hours in police custody, "and we are very proud of all that he is doing to make Hong Kong a better place for his generation, and our generation."

They are proud of what he is doing for the betterment of his society and not that he is getting arrested. You can disagree with his approach but you are not entitled to the facts.

Where are the adults? Where are the parents in that picture? Why aren't they there to protect their children from triad thugs? Is it because adult faces would ruin the innocence or "purity" as you put it? I call it cynical manipulation. To thrust a 15 years old kid into potentially dangerous street protest. Joshua obviously came from a religious and politically active family. It is good his parents raised him to be "compassionate, caring, principled and loyal", but they obviously didn't raise him to be a critical thinker. Instead his parents allowed Joshua to be exploited as the figurehead of a political movement, before he had a chance to explore other worldviews, before he learned to think for himself. That is a crime and a shame.

btw, the idea that innocent children are somehow "tainted in life" as you put it is a Christian worldview borrowed from ancient Greek philosophers. in the Chines Confucian philosophy, children are not viewed as innocent, they need to educated, disciplined, and gain experience in life before they become well-rounded persons. That's why elders are respected.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

It's time for radical political groups in Hong Kong to face hard political realities

Alex Lo [email protected]
BIO
Alex Lo is a senior writer at the South China Morning Post. He writes editorials and the daily “My Take” column on page 2. He also edits the weekly science and technology page in Sunday Morning Post.

Scholarism's Joshua Wong Chi-fung (left) and Civic Party legislator Ronny Tong Ka-wah.

A Post op-ed recently castigates the rise of radical anti-democracy groups. They keep interfering with "the otherwise peaceful forums, rallies, demonstrations and protest marches" of pro-democracy groups and often hurl verbal abuse at them. Among these groups are the Justice Alliance, Caring Hong Kong Power and Defend Hong Kong Campaign.

Having been to a few of these rallies, I must say the verbal abuse was usually mutual. As for turning peaceful rallies into confrontation, I think the more uncompromising pan-democrat or anti-mainland groups have been far more active and ready to fight with police.

Those pro-Beijing groups are a joke and hardly deserve to be taken seriously. They have no real political influence or public support. However, the "radical" groups in the pan-democratic camp are no joke; they are close to taking over the whole movement and marginalising the more moderate democrats.

Scholarism and People Power succeeded in undermining all election reform proposals by moderate democrats in favour of their own civic nomination plans for the Occupy Central mock referendum to be held this month.

When you have Wong Yeung-tat of Civic Passion accusing Lee Cheuk-yan and the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China of being useless, or Scholarism's Joshua Wong Chi-fung heckling Civic Party legislator Ronny Tong Ka-wah like he was part of the chief secretary's entourage, you have a pretty extreme makeover of the whole movement.

Joshua Wong's only real democracy is civic nomination with no room for compromise. The older Wong told Lee he didn't just want full democracy, but to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. I guess that means no deal and no negotiation.

The "radicals" on both sides have more in common than they think. Both refuse to recognise certain basic realities. On the one hand, some kind of full democracy is inevitable for Hong Kong. On the other, there is this colossus called China. The mainland will influence and dictate to Hong Kong simply by sheer geographical proximity. The communist state is not going away. The sooner we produce a political system and politicians who can reconcile these hard realities, the better.

PanAsian · Oct 3, 2014

Brumby said:
I think when the problems surfaced in Mong Kok there were probably initial confusion over facts on the ground. There might be assumption on the part of the movement that it was orchestrated by the HKSAR. A basic premise in any negotiation is the need to act in good faith. If that is not seen to be present then any negotiations will just be a sham.

I think the movement should withdraw from Mong Kok and regroup their resources in the Central district. Let the situation settle down and get the facts straighten. This requires organisation and intelligence on the ground which is best directed and managed from a central command.

They should then go back to negotiations after ensuring the safety of people involved in the movement.

The protesters made a major mistake when they decided to block normally customer-packed commercial streets in a working class and night life oriented neighborhood like Mong Kok. While the businesses and workers in relatively ritzy and big-business-oriented Central and Admiralty may be able to afford the losses and may not live in the area, the opposite is true in Mong Kok, small time gangsters included. So it should be no surprise to anyone thinking rationally that Mong Kok residents and small business owners, once again small time gangsters included, would be much more negatively affected by and hostile towards street blocking protesters.

Whether there is collusion between gangsters and the police is an open question though the facts are the police is outnumbered everywhere in Hong Kong, trying not to be the bad guys, trying not to be the target of everyone else, and still arresting troublemakers all at the same time, so there does not need to be collusion for the police to be lenient at first but getting tough on repeat offenders. The blaming and all-or-nothing nature of the protests is bias and unreasonableness from the get go, these accusations of police colluding with gangsters under such circumstances are somewhere between conspiracy theory and clinical paranoia when facts are taken into account.

And what applies to Mong Kok applies to Causeway Bay as well.

Brumby · Oct 3, 2014

plawolf said:
Firstly, I think a few obvious points need to made clear. Hong Kong is governed by one country two systems.
Since Hong Kong is Chinese sovereign territory, I do not see how extradition procedures would apply.
Any movement of prisoners between prisons within a country would just be covered by normal prisoner transfer procedures and regulations. Or at least that is how government lawyers would argue if they wished to make that move and were challenged.

The one country two systems actually support the requirement of extradition procedures rather than not because one country applies only to defence and foreign policy. Everything else is domestic and for all intent and purposes a different legal jurisdiction.

There is an extract from Wikipedia which summarises HK Basic Law and extradition issues which best represent the facts on the ground.
“No formal terms for extradition of criminals exist. Article 95 provides for mutual judicial assistance between Hong Kong and the PRC; however, serious stumbling blocks, such as capital punishment stand in the way of a formal understanding of extradition. Additionally, HKSAR authorities have ruled that Articles 6 and 7 of the PRC Criminal Code does not give Hong Kong sole jurisdiction in criminal matters, particularly when a crime is committed across provincial or SAR borders. The current status quo is that Hong Kong will ask for the return of Hong Kong residents who have committed crimes in Hong Kong and are arrested in the mainland. A mainlander who commits a crime in Hong Kong and flees back to the mainland, however, will be tried in the mainland. In cases of concurrent jurisdiction, the Central Government has demanded that the trial be held in the mainland. Prominent authorities, such as Albert Chen, a professor, and Gladys Li, chairman of justice of the Hong Kong section of the International Commission of Jurists, feel that this situation has serious ramifications for judicial independence in Hong Kong.”

Basically there is a clear recognition by all informed parties that some form of extradition is a necessary requirement.

plawolf said:
Secondly, there may be a time limit on how long police can hold someone before charging them, but there is no such limit that I am aware of, of how long police can remand people in custody pending their allotted court date to contest those charges.
It is certainly not unheard of for people to spend years in jail in western democracies waiting for their day in court. And that's just from normal backlogs. In a mass arrest incident, a wait time of months to years is certainly not unreasonable.

I don’t know the fine technicalities on duration that authorities can hold other than the 72 hours but that is irrelevant to our present conversation as it is about location and not how long.

plawolf said:
Lastly, it should be noted that Hong Kong's special status and privileges are granted by Beijing, and can be changed or revoked by Beijing just as any Soverign government may amend or revoke any existing domestic law so long as the constitutional requirements are met.
Stripping HK of all its rights and privileges would be an unnecessary extreme move, but it would not be beyond the realm of possiblity for Beijing to strip away some fringe rights that would not impact on many people's normal lives, just to make a point, with the obvious unspoken understanding that it could strip away more rights and privileges if it sees fit.
That is pretty much the trump card that Beijing could play to sidestep any legal loop holes any lawyers might find to oppose what they want. The questions really would be whether Beijing sees it as necessary to employ such a crude instrument to get its way.

Beijing as the political master is not in dispute, and that is reality.
Invoking cross border transfers is not a procedural expediency but requiring an extreme move, and that was my point - all along.

plawolf said:
Up to now, it has opted to try and work within HK's legal framework to get things done. However, Beijing's patience is not infinite, and China's leaders may simply wonder why they should continue to honour HK's local lawers when the anti-Beijing elements seems to care so little breaking the very laws they claim to champion.

I agree that is the case at least up this point. I also agree that the movement has to operate within the rule of law and the framework that defines the relationship between HK and Beijing and that is the Basic Law.

Hong Kong....Occupy Central Demonstrations....

xiabonan

Junior Member

Brumby

Major

xiabonan

Junior Member

shen

Senior Member

xiabonan

Junior Member

Brumby

Major

SinoSoldier

Colonel

shen

Senior Member

PanAsian

Major

Brumby

Major