Tatami is a very suspenseful and watchable mix of sports and politics (Film review)

  

Face to Face with Zar Amir at the 2024

Hong Kong International Film Festival :) 

 

Tatami (Georgia-U.S.A., 2023)

- Guy Nattiv (who co-scripted with Elham Erfani) and Zar Amir, co-directors

- Starring: Arienne Mandi, Zar Amir, Jaime Ray Newman, Nadine Marshall

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Cinephile Paradise program

 

As I write this, the Georgian capital of Tblisi is in the news as it is rocked by mass protests by the country's citizenry against its government.  In Tatami, however, it is a politically neutral space which is playing host to a World Judo Championships that Iranian judoka Leila Hosseini (played by Arienne Mandi) aspires to win, even if this means her going up and defeating a friend who also is a sporting rival in Israeli judoka Shani Lavi (essayed by Lir Katz).

 

As those familiar with Middle East politics will know though, Iranian hardliners would not countenance the idea of someone from their country appearing next to someone from Israel in public.  So when a genuine possibility arises of Leila and Shani coming together in an upcoming round of the competition, pressure gets put on Leila from the Iranian regime to either pull out of the championship by faking an injury or deliberately losing to an opponent in an early round.

 

A true sportswoman (who cares far more about sport than politics, and for whom it's anathema to throw a match), Leila refuses to do so.  In so doing, she directly defies her long time coach (and former judo champion), Maryam (portrayed by Zar Amir), as well as Iranian government officials who have commanded Maryam to get her charge to do what they want.  And because the order to withdraw comes from the very top, this act of disobedience and defiance puts Leila and Maryam -- and perhaps even more so since they're in Iran: Leila's husband (played by Ash Goldeh), young son and parents, and Maryam's family -- in grave danger.

 

Based on and inspired by true occurences and events, Tatami is a nail-bitingly suspenseful drama with a a great story to tell.  It also is a very watchable sports actioner with emotionally gripping judo scenes that must have demanded much physically from its actresses, and are excitingly lensed (in black andd white -- a decision Zar Amir explained as wanting to emphasize the black-and-white view of the world held by the Iranian regime, and black and white outfits of the competing judoka -- by Todd Martin) and dynamically edited (by Yuval Orr).  

 

As improbable as it might sound, Tatami got this (re)viewer caring about whether Leila would win every single one of the judo bouts we see her compete in -- often utterly ferociously, like she was fighting for her very life on the tatami -- as well as whether she and her family, and also Maryam (who one can sees does care very much for Leila as an athlete as well as Leila as a person, and for Leila's and her own safety), will somehow be able to escape the wrath and/or grasps of the ayatollahs.  It helps that Arienne Mandi put in such a winning performance; ditto Zee Avi, whose character was more difficult to champion and like while even more conflicted.

 

More than by the way, Zar Amir not only co-starred and -directed but also was in charge of Tatami's casting and is one of the film's co-producers.  I think it also worth noting -- and I'm sure had some impact on the production -- that she knows what it's like to have incurred the anger of the Iranian authorities.  More specifically, she was banned from appearing in films and TV for 10 years, and sentenced to  to 99 lashes with a leather strap, by the Iranian court -- and only avoided these penalties by fleeing Iran.  She has lived in France since 2008.     

 

My rating for the film: 9.0

Hong Kong back in the limelight -- thanks to announcements by Agnes Chow and the Hong Kong government, and other farcical actions by the authorities that are hard to ignore

View from a plane on one of the 

Hong Kong International Airport runway

 

In recent weeks/months, my Twitter Timeline has had a far larger percentage of Tweets about Israel and Palestine than I ever could have imagined would be the case before October 7th; this not least since most of the people I know do not live in either of those territories -- and, if truth be told, not that many of them are Jews or Muslim either. 

 

Over the past 48 hours or so, however, the attention of many of those I Follow on that social media platform has turned back to Hong Kong; thanks in no small part to activist Agnes Chow breaking the news (on Sunday, her 27th birthday) that she is no longer in Hong Kong (English translation of her Chinese language post on Instagram here) and is unlikely to return to her home city, and the Hong Kong government Streisand effecting the hell out of her decision by issuing angry and frankly quite bizarre statements about her.

 

It's weird enough that the first of them (see here) looked to have deliberately left out her name, preferring to refer to her as "the woman" -- as though they had been scorned by her.  But the second of them (see here) is so apoplectic in tone that the BBC's China Correspondent was prompted to Tweet the following about it: "Have a look at the adjectives and adverbs in this statement from the Hong Kong government. If the intended effect was to persuade readers that a dissident should return to the city the actual result makes it sound like a place from where sane people should flee"!

 

In addition, there are other things going on in this part of the world that spark dismay and comment from people who care for Hong Kong.  For example, Sunday also saw some members of the League of Social Democrats, one of Hong Kong's few remaining pro-democracy political parties, and their friends getting stopped and searched by the police while out hiking!  As per a Hong Kong Free Press report: "According to the group, around 20 uniform and plainclothes police officers stopped the individuals at around 2.30 pm and accused them of breaching the Beijing-imposed security law. They were searched and their belongings were inspected, with the entire process lasting around two hours".

 

Even more concerning and horrifying was the news today that "a Hong Kong protester shot by police in 2019 has been featured in a police-promoted television special showing remorse over his frontline participation in the unrest that year".  As the Washington Post's Shibani Mahtani was prompted to Tweet: "Tsang Chi-kin was shot, tried to seek asylum and protection from the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong, spent two years hiding in safe houses and transported from place to place in boxes, was sentenced to nearly four years -- as if that wasn't enough, now he's "confessing" on TV" -- and make no mistake, it's easy to see that this was a forced confession; something that says much worse about the regime directing the "confessions" than the person forced into doing the "confessing".

 

Some additional context provided by Mahtani: "Tsang was only 18 in 2019, one of the hundreds of thousands of anonymous masked protesters until he was shot. Hard to comprehend how the trajectory of so many lives where changed in that year; the line between victim and perpetrator so intentionally blurred by authorities now."

 

And then we had a report of the closing arguments made for the marathon trial of the Hong Kong 47 (the 47 people charged with breaking the national security law China imposed on Hong Kong on June 30th, 2020, by organising and/or taking part in electoral primaries for the democratic camp in July of that year, ahead of the Legislative Council election then scheduled to also take place in 2020 but which were subsequently postponed to December 2021).   

 

Arrested on February 28th, 2021, and the majority of the 47 denied bail and held behind bars since then, their trial only finally began some two years later in February 2023. And it was only yesterday, December 4th, 2023, that closing submissions were made. How slowly the wheels of justice can seem to move these days in Hong Kong!

 

Among the more interesting statements made by lawyers for the defence yesterday are the following: "Prosecutors must have proven that Hong Kong pro-democracy figures at the centre of a landmark national security trial had used violence and intended to subvert state power if they are to be found guilty".  

 

There's also this from Trevor Beel, the counsel for journalist turned political activist turned political prisoner Gwyneth Ho: “This charge of conspiracy is like no other charge that has come before the courts... Everything was conducted openly for the simple reason that nobody knew what they were doing was illegal.”

 

All of which makes the proceedings of this trial all the more farcical. Except it's no joke when I tell you that this trial is jury-less and, instead, the innocence or guilt of the "Hong Kong 47", as they have become known, will be decided by three judges from the pool of those eligible to preside over national security trials and handpicked by the government. :(

The Great Firewall of China has not descended upon Hong Kong... for now

  

What are the chances now of the Great Firewall of China 

descending on Hong Kong less than three years from now?

(N.B. The above photo was taken back in November 2019)

 

A massive internet outage occurred earlier today.  Imagine the relief of thousands, if not millions, of Hong Kongers upon realizing that it wasn't just them who (temporarily) lost access to global news sources and that the Great Firewall of China has not descended upon the territory, at least not just yet.  

 

I'm not going to lie in that this is a fear I've had ever since China's security law was announced as going to also being imposed on and in Hong Kong back in May of last year.  And I don't doubt that at some point in the not too distant future, the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, WhatsApp, Youtube and websites belonging to the The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, CNN, the British Broadcasting Coroporation (BBC) and NHK (AKA Japan Broadcasting Company) will be banned and inaccessible in "Asia's World City" as well as Mainland China.

 

For those who didn't realize: internet censorship has already commenced in Hong Kong though, just not on the mega, pervasive scale as in Mainland China.  Back in January of this year, the Hong Kong police ordered the city’s major telecoms providers to block access to an anti-government website.  The likes of the Hong Kong Broadband Network, China Mobile, Smartone and PCCW’s HKT complied and blocked HKChronicles, which collected information during the anti-extradition protests and operated as a pro-democracy doxxing platform, from being viewed in Hong Kong.  (On the other hand, a doxxing website targeting pro-democracy protesters, as well as journalists, remains viewable by Hong Kong-based internet users.)

 

Since then, a number of other websites -- all of them based in Taiwan (including Taiwan's Transitional Justice Commission, an independent government agency, and the Taiwan Presbyterian Church which reportedly launched a campaign to help Hong Kongers flee to Taiwan) -- have also been blocked off to Hong Kong internet users without a Virtual Private Network (VPN).  But it was in the past week or so that things appear to have stepped up a notch -- or, at least, there were attempts to do so. 

 

First, we had Nathan Law reporting on the 2021 Hong Kong Charter website launched in May by eight exiled Hong Kongers, including him and Ted Hui, having been taken down by its Israeli server, Wix, upon the request of the Hong Kong police.  And while Wix did end up reinstating the website after he Tweeted about it, it's still a frightening illustration of the willingness of the Hong Kong police to implement China's national security law for Hong Kong outside of Hong Kong (and the territories under the rule of the Communist Chinese regime).      

In a similar manner, Microsoft's search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down a line of tanks one day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place – for several hours this past June 4th, citing "accidental human error" for the occurence.  Something worth noting when considering if this was a genuine mistake made: Microsoft Bing is one of the few foreign search engines that are accessible in China, because the company agreed to censor results for sensitive terms such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong for searches made by its Chinese users. 

 

Also last week, the website of the US-based Hong Kong Liberation Coalition, co-founded by Hong Kong exile, Baggio Leung, was taken down by its American host, WordPress.  In this particular case, the website's erstwhile hosts deny that they had been asked to do so by the Hong Kong police and, instead, stated that it had content that violated WordPress's User Guidelines.  The upshot, though, is that the Hong Kong Liberation Coalition's website will be looking for another host (even while continuing to retain a (small) presence on Twitter).

 

Lastly, for now, it was reported today that Facebook has refused all 202 Hong Kong government requests for user data it received in the first six months after Hong Kong enacted the national security law last June.  This disclosure came from the company’s latest transparency report -- and we can but hope that we will learn that Facebook has continued to safeguard the privacy of its (Hong Kong) users in calendar 2021 when the transparency reports for the relevant time period is made available in the future.  

 

I am also fervently hoping that the likes of Facebook will still be accessible in Hong Kong through this year and into next.  Sadly, however, it is no longer a given that the Great Firewall of China won't descend upon, and envelope, Hong Kong in the (not so distant) future: just like it is no longer a given that Hong Kong will see another candlelight vigil at Victoria Park on June 4th or (mega) protest march like that which took place on June 9th, 2019 -- not even two years ago today.

The police throwing their weight around in Hong Kong and seeking to do so beyond

 

Some of the football pitches at Victoria Park that are 

usually full of people on the evening of June 4th

 

Come rain or shine, I expect them to be this empty tomorrow 

(the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre) though :(

 

I went to Victoria Park earlier this week and spent time on its football pitches -- not playing football but, rather, thinking back to the many times I had gone and taken part in the June 4th candlelight vigil along with tens, even hundreds, of thousands of other people determined to not forget that back on June 4th, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party had sent its army to massacre Chinese people.  Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to set foot on that space tomorrow evening -- or, actually, maybe even tonight and all day tomorrow -- as the authorities here are so intent on making sure that people don't gather to mourn there that they are set to have 3,000 police officers guarding the place and deploy some 4,000 other police officers across Hong Kong on a day that obviously is of no small importance to them as well as other Hong Kongers.

 

Only the most trustingly gullible of folks can believe that the authorities are doing this to prevent the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus; this especially since it is now 36 days since Hong Kong recorded a new local coronavirus case and 41 days since its last unknown source was reported.  Instead, what we have is a state of affairs whereby, in the words of historian Jeppe Mulich, "The authorities want so dearly to avoid even a single photograph of people gathering around lit candles that they would rather have thousands of jackbooted officers surrounding a public park. *That* is the image they want projected into the world."     

 

On the subject of academics: a plea was sent out this week by Hong Kong-based academics for their foreign-based colleagues to "Shun Hong Kong".  There's very little mincing of words in the open letter.  A couple of sample paragraphs reads as follows:

As things stand today, academics or professionals who take up new employment in Hong Kong are signing up to knowingly support an unaccountable, autocratic government’s attempts to gaslight the international community into accepting systematic, wholesale violations of international treaty obligations and of Hong Kong’s own Basic Law — the territory’s constitution — which guarantees freedom of speech, association, assembly, procession and demonstration.  

The Hong Kong government hopes to leverage its deep financial resources and the territory’s traditional commercial and institutional strengths to buy outsiders’ respect, or at least their silence. But in 2021 the trade-off is too dear. Cooperate with a vindictive, rogue regime, and you forfeit your own moral dignity. Authorities in Hong Kong, secure in their bubble of wishful thinking, see no reason they or the regime they serve should face any repercussions for their deplorable violations of civil and human rights. But actions must have consequences. It comes down to all of us, individually and collectively, to ensure they do. 

Right now, the authorities -- and its police arm, especially -- must feel that they are very much in the ascendancy.  They've managed to do so much to hurt the Hong Kong pro-democracy camp and movement -- especially in the less than one year that China's security law has been imposed on Hong Kong -- without suffering any substantial consequences.  (Even if she's not laughing all the way to the bank, Carrie Lam isn't exactly feeling bankrupt.)     

As the way it often goes with bullies, the more they get their way, the more they want to throw their weight around.  The latest revealed action on the part of the Hong Kong police appears to have involved invoking the security law to get a foreign company to take down a website it had been hosting that was run by Hong Kongers based outside of Hong Kong. 

At the time of writing, the 2021 Hong Kong Charter website launched in March by eight Hong Kongers, including Nathan Law and Ted Hui, is back up and running after what Wix, the site's Israeli domain host, purportedly took it down "by mistake" for three days.  The following facts remain though: that, as noted by the Washington Post's Shibani Mahtani, "the Hong Kong police requested a foreign company to take down a website, involving people *outside of Hong Kong* and they complied. When they said the NSL applies to anyone, everywhere, it was hard to imagine global companies complying — but here they are."     

As Hong Kong-based lawyer Antony Dapiran points out, "This is an act of global censorship beyond anything the PRC govt has attempted before. HK police are not just asking the site be blocked in HK: they are demanding the whole site be taken down."  For the Hong Kong police to attempt something beyond what the Chinese Communist government has done thus far is really something.  We're talking, after all, of a regime whose international incursions have included their: building artificial islands in disputed waters; establishing villages in another country (without asking that country's government for permission); and having its military planes fly in tactical formation into another country's airspace (again, without the permission of the authorities of the other country).      

At the same time, this is the same regime (or regimes -- Hong Kong's and Beijing's -- if we still believe in the existence of "one country, two systems") that bristle against any "foreign interference" into that which they look upon as its/their internal affairs.  This may include such as a British newspaper publishing an editorial asking people outside China to mourn the dead of the Tiananmen Square Massacre for those who cannot that contains the following points that people would do well to remember as we approach the 32nd anniversary of that tragic event on Chinese soil (and the second that Hong Kongers are being barred from publically observing):

The right to remember what happened in 1989 is also the right to know the truth more broadly: “Defending the memory of Tiananmen is the first line of defence,” one Hong Kong lawyer said this week.

What we should recall, however, is not only the slaughter 32 years ago, but the huge support for the protests which preceded it. There were marches in more than 300 cities; officials including police and judges participated in demonstrations calling for freedom and reform. Many of the hundreds, possibly thousands, who died in Beijing and elsewhere were not students, but ordinary residents attempting to protect them. To remember 1989 is to remember that there is an alternative, however impossible it might seem now: that Hong Kong could have kept its freedoms; that octogenarians could be allowed to mourn their slain children without harassment; that Uyghurs could live in dignity in Xinjiang; that human rights could be protected in China and its people trusted with the truth and the freedom to debate them.

The authorities come gunning again for Jimmy Lai and Apple Daily, who once more could do with Hong Kongers' support

The front page of today's Apple Daily

 

Should the photo seem familiar, it's because it also appeared 

on the front page of the February 19th issue of the newspaper

"Apple Daily will be published as usual tomorrow. Don’t forget to get a copy,” the paper's editor-in-chief, Chan Pui-man, posted on social media last night.  This assurance came in the wake of an announcement by the authorities yesterday evening that assets belonging to Apple Daily's founder, Jimmy Lai (including 71.26 per cent of voting shares in the firm which owns the pro-democracy tabloid) had been frozen.

 

As an Apple Daily article reporting the news noted: "This is believed to be the first use of seizure powers granted to authorities under Article 43 of the national security law, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last June, to effectively criminalize the city’s once-tolerated dissenting voices."  And should a reminder be necessary: Jimmy Lai's security law trial has not yet begun but the 73-year-old billionaire is already behind bars after being given prison sentences for organizing and participating in two unauthorized assemblies that were part of the pro-democracy/anti-government protests started by Carrie Lam seeking to enact a controversial and highly unpopular extradition bill back in early 2019.

 

What passes for "usual" and "normal" in Hong Kong is getting more and more troubling by the month, week and day. (Yesterday also saw a pro-Beijing man sentenced to six years and four months in prison, after he admitted to stabbing and slashing a teenager in the stomach at the Tai Po 'Lennon tunnel' two years ago.  As history professor Jeppe Mulich pointed out, "The absurdity is not that the defendant received a ~6 year sentence, but that sentences in the 4-6 year range are routinely handed out to people for "rioting" offenses. None of which involve the type of violence on display here": specifically, the guilty party in question caused his victim's guts to literally spill out!)  

 

And there's no doubt about Jimmy Lai and Apple Daily being among the Hong Kongers and Hong Kong organizations that are very much in Beijing's sights.  Rather than sow further fear into people here though, Hong Kongers being Hong Kongers, this looked to only encourage more open shows of support for Jimmy Lai and Apple Daily today by way of people going off to buy copies of the newspaper today -- in a repeat of what happened last August after Jimmy Lai was first arrested.  

At the first two places I looked for a copy of Apple Daily today, there were no copies of the pro-democracy newspaper in sight even while there were plenty of copies of other newspapers available.  Presumably, this is because the outlets had sold out of copies of Apple Daily rather than because they weren't stocking it or anything like that.  And at the street stand where I finally got a copy of the newspaper, I saw more copies being delivered while I was there -- so I'm presuming that extra copies were being printed late into the day which, of course, would be a good sign indeed for the publication.  

Almost needless to say, Apple Daily really could do with some support right now.  As was the case the first time I bought it, it was shocking to see how bereft of ads today's issue of the newspaper was -- and interesting to see that a rare ad in it had been placed by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (which was itself in the news today for having had researchers involved in the successful landing of China's space probe on Mars).  Hopefully, there will be a new round of ads being placed in the pro-democracy publication in the coming days and weeks. 

 

Even before the freezing of Jimmy Lai's assets, yesterday had been a sad day for Apple Daily -- with the announcement being made that its sister publication in Taiwan would cease publication of its print edition next week.  On a more positive note: today saw it being bestowed with the Kam Yiu-yu Press Freedom Award -- something announced in a Tweet by fellow award recipient Bao Choy, another Hong Kong media personality who knows what it's like to be prosecuted and penalized by the authorities, yet is still continuing to fight for justice all the same.

 

P.S. It's not escaped my attention that today also saw a tower block in Gaza City that housed media organizations having been destroyed by the Israeli air force.  There's no doubt about it: the press is under attack in too many parts of the world.  And while it can feel like those with guns and bombs have the upper hand at present, one also gets the sense that it's because they fear that the pen really can be mightier than the sword.  

More Hong Kong government missteps in the battle against the Wuhan coronavirus

If only things were that simple...

 

In recent days, people have been looking at Israel and Chile -- two countries with higher vaccine rates than much of the rest of the world -- and questioning whether vaccinating against the Wuhan coronavirus is enough to get us out of the pandemic.  For some folks, it's obvious: yes, vaccines help but only if they are ones with high efficacy.  

 

Israel has opted for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (which has a reported efficacy rate of 95 percent) and it looks to have paid dividends.  Specifically, there has been found to be a 94 percent drop in symptomatic infections and a 92 percent drop in serious cases of the disease among those vaccinated with it.  On the other hand, Chile went for the Sinovac vaccine and despite more than 33 percent of the Latin American country's population having had one or both jabs, it is currently encountering problems quelling a second coronavirus wave.        

 

At a medical conference in Chengdu this past weekend, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention director, Gao Fu, acknowledged that current Chinese vaccines (including Sinovac) don’t have very high protection rates.  Back in January, a Brazilian study showed that Sinovac had just a 50.4% efficacy rate.  Worse, it was reported earlier this month that: "A recent study of the effectiveness of Chile’s vaccination programme found that two weeks after receiving a second jab [of the Sinovac vaccine], it is 56% effective, but with one jab effectiveness drops to just 3%"!   

 

As it so happens, Hong Kongers have the option of getting either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Sinovac vaccine.  Based on their efficacy rates, it should be a no-brainer which one people should choose.  And, if one factors out political considerations, it's hard to understand why the government has even bought and is administering Sinovac vaccines to people here.

But the truth of the matter is that how the Hong Kong government is choosing to fight the Wuhan coronavirus seems to be informed more by politics than medical concerns alone.  And today, Carrie Lam has reaffirmed that with her revelation that further relaxing of social distancing regulations affecting such as restaurants and bars are predicated on the use of the government's Leave Home app (which many people -- including IT people I know -- see as spyware and consequently shun) even more so than vaccinations.  

 

With Hong Kong recording just two new coronavirus cases today and its fourth coronavirus wave looking to have finally come to an end, people aren't exactly rushing to get vaccinated -- and this continued lack of incentives from the government is not going to encourage the vaccination drive.  Indeed, one could make a case for these latest government announcements making them less likely to want to do what the government wants, including going and getting vaccinated!

 

And what of the people without smartphones or any mobile phones (who are unable to download the government's app even if they wanted to)?  Furthermore, what of the people not (yet) eligible to get vaccinated (even if they wanted to) -- who currently includes everyone under the age of 30 -- as well as folks who are immunocompromised and otherwise have health reasons for not getting the vaccine?  

 

I guess Carrie Lam and co didn't think of them as they don't fall into those categories.  Put another way: she and her government don't seem to consider these people who are unlike her to be worth considering or caring about.  And then she -- who really seems to go from blunder to blunder in the fight against the Wuhan coronavirus, as with so much else - wonders why people don't consider her a trustworthy leader of Hong Kong!  Or maybe she -- who has taken off her mask (literally as well as figuratively) in recent weeks -- really doesn't give a damn anymore.  

Flimsy public health threat excuses and real tears that give the bluff away

No games -- or candlelight vigils -- on Victoria Park's

football pitches after June 4th (and maybe beyond?)

 

A familiar scene from previous years that 

won't be seen on June 4th this year :(

 

It's official: the annual candlelight vigil to remember the Tiananmen Square massacre will not be allowed to take place this year.  The Hong Kong police (who are given the authority to issue "letters of no objection" or ban planned public gatherings in Hong Kong) say that they are not allowing a crowd to assemble at Victoria Park this Thursday for health reasons.   

 

To be sure, Hong Kong still has not completely eradicated the Wuhan coronavirus within the territory; with yesterday and today seeing not only new cases but local transmissions at that.  But, to put things into context, we're talking there having been one and three new cases respectively on Sunday and this Monday -- and for more than two weeks before that, there were zero local transmissions among the new daily cases reported.  

 

Also, as the Israelis showed back on April 20th, it is entirely possible to socially distance while protesting -- and this particularly for something like Hong Kong's June 4th vigil, where the vast majority of attendees remain in just one spot for pretty much the duration of the event.  So, truly, there should be no question that the decision to ban this particular memorial vigil which, to date, has taken place every year since 1989 is a political one on the part of the authorities; and this even more so when the eternally unpopular 689 stated two Sundays ago that the June 4th vigil could be permanently banned in future after China's national security law for Hong Kong is passed.

 

Rather than gnash and wail about this anticipated decision, the vigil organizers have already got and publicized a plan B for this year -- and invited the world to take part, not just Hong Kongers.  I hope people will do so as this year, particularly, since this June 4th commemoration will be as much about Hong Kong as the Tiananmen Square Massacre; so they'll be signalling their willingness to Stand with Hong Kong as well as Never Forget 6.4.  

 

Returning to the issue of the national security legislation: various organizations and individuals are still coming out (post coercion?) to give their public support to its passing.  But there's little doubt in my mind that the vast majority of Hong Kongers oppose and even fear its passing; with this particular piece of Communist Chinese regime legislation provoking the worst anxiety since the handover in many people.  

 

And if that's not enough, Hong Kongers also have the US sanctions to worry about in the wake of the American government officially recognizing that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China.  As proof: just look at how world stocks, especially those listed on Hong Kong's stock exchange, took a hit last Friday and how there's been a rush by people to change their Hong Kong dollars to US dollars, with the demand being so overwhelmingly high that money changers ran out of the American currency.  

Hong Kong financial secretary Paul Chan has tried to put on a brave face in recent days, stating today that there are no plans for Hong Kong to remove the Hong Kong dollar's peg to the US dollar and suggesting yesterday that the United States of America has more to lose from revoking Hong Kong's special trade status than Hong Kong.  But it says so much that he suddenly started weeping when asked to further comment today on these threatened actions.   

More than one person has interpreted these tears to have come from self-pity; seeing as Chan is included in the Gang of 30 to be sanctioned in a report compiled by an overseas team with regards to the USA's Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 (HKHRDA).  However Cambridge University history professor Jeppe Mulich has a more generous take on the matter, tweeting that: "Here's the thing about people like Paul Chan, Matthew Cheung, and the five university presidents. They know what the [National People's Congress's security legislation] decision means for Hong Kong's future. With the exception of diehards like C.Y. Leung, nobody at the top wants this. They just don't think they have a choice."  

 

A reminder: Hong Kong currently is one of the world's major financial centers; with only New York and London being rated more highly than it.  And for all the talk of its GDP being dwarfed by Mainland China's, it still has an outsize importance to China.  There's a detailed Twitter thread by geo-political analyst Navroop Singh on this.  Alternatively for those who want it put more succinctly, a recent Wall Street Journal article declared that Hong Kong bankrolls Mainland China!

No longer Asia's finest and in danger of sinking still further: my updated thoughts about the Hong Kong police

Time was when I used to think of the Hong Kong police 

as shining lights of sorts...

 

...but that notion doesn't apply now

Around this time last Wednesday, I was heading over to have dinner with a former colleague over in Tsim Sha Tsui East.  As we feasted on goodies and generally had a good time catching up, we had little inkling that a very disturbing event was taking place further up the Kowloon peninsula involving thousands of serving and retired Hong Kong police officers.

 

In a nutshell: a crowd estimated at over 30,000 in number, and mainly consisting of current along with former purported law enforcers, had assembled to protest the sentence handed by a judge against seven men found guilty of assaulting an unarmed -- tied-up even -- individual.  Think about this for a moment: a large number of the very people that Hong Kongers are supposed to trust to uphold the law had turned up to show their support for seven convicted criminals!

 

How horrifying is that?  And, frankly, those seven convicted criminals happening to be policemen -- comprising one chief inspector, a senior inspector and a sergeant along with four constables -- and the man they attacked a pro-democracy activist, and the attack having taken place at the height of the Umbrella Movement, makes the deed of their fellow police officers even more terrible to my eyes. 

 

One week on, the shock of it all has still not yet faded; and this particularly in light of details such as a police sergeant speaking at the rally having likened the situation in which the Hong Kong police have found themselves to that of the Jews persecuted by the Nazis!  Quite apart from causing diplomatic embarassment for Hong Kong -- and prompting both the Israeli and German consulates in Hong Kong to issue statements criticizing the Holocaust comparison -- there's the horror of realizing how ignorant that policeman and those who applauded his words, and how their perception of what's going in Hong Kong is.

 

Something that makes me feel so very sad is that many of my favorite Hong Kong movies feature heroic and righteous police protagonists.  And less than seven years ago, I happily noted down how the local police force had an 85% community confidence rating.  Not anymore.  Instead, the question now is: how much lower can they go?  Hopefully not down to the point where their reputation as "Asia's finest" will never be retrievable.  But if the faith of the public is to be restored in the local constabulary, things definitely will have to change for the better (including with the sacking of the seven convicted criminals, who still haven't been dismissed from their positions in the police force), and soon.