International recognition of Chow Hang-tung, and Hong Kong's lack of press freedom on World Press Freedom Day (May 3rd)

Golden sky in Hong Kong the day after Golden Week ended! :D

 

Let's start with what passes for good news for pro-democracy Hong Kongers in the national security law era: It was announced yesterday that Hong Kong lawyer-activist Chow Hang-tung had been chosen by South Korea's May 18 Memorial Foundation as the winner of this year's Gwangju Prize for Human Rights.  ""Chow Hang-tung's struggle against the Hong Kong government's undemocratic, inhumane treatment has become the source of courage and hope for human rights advocates and those longing for democracy around the world, even when she is in custody," said Moon Hee-sang, head of the judging panel and former speaker of the National Assembly."

 

Some context from an article in The Korea Times: "The Gwangju Prize for Human Rights was established in 2000 to mark the spirit of the Korean movement for democracy and honor those who fight for human rights and peace. Previous winners include Cynthia Maung, a Burmese doctor and founder of Mae Tao Clinic which has been providing free healthcare services for internally displaced people and migrant workers, and Arnon Nampa, a Thai human rights lawyer and vocal critic of the country's monarchy."  (The Gwangju Uprising, known in South Korea as May 18, began in Gwangju on May 18th, 1980, and had as its goal the ending of dictatorial rule in the country.)

 

Also from the same South Korean new piece: "Chow, 38, who is in prison now after being convicted of inciting and taking part in arranging an unlawful assembly ― a commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre ― has become a symbolic figure for everyone who is longing for democracy, a judging committee said at the May 18 Memorial Foundation office in Gwangju".  And yes, it is heartening to get more confirmation that Chow is seen as such in territories beyond Hong Kong as well as her native Hong Kong.  (More than by the way, Chow Hang-tung also is one of six Hong Kongers nominated for the Nobel Peace Price this year.)

 

Sadly, since Chow is currently behind bars (and looks to be so for a time), she will not be able to travel to Gwangju to accept her award.  Instead, "[o]n behalf of Chow, her representative is expected to receive the award at the ceremony on May 18, Korea's anniversary of the 1980 pro-democracy uprising in the southwestern city."  And if it so happens that the six Hong Kongers nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize were to win it (a long shot but, hey, there's a chance!), they all would have to have representatives accept it on their behalf -- as was the case with Liu Xiaobo back in 2010.  

 

While we're on the subject: another of the six Hong Kong Nobel Peace Prize nominees is Gwyneth Ho, another Hong Kong political prisoner I got to thinking of yesterday as a result of it being World Press Freedom Day on account of her having been a journalist before becoming a political activist.  Ho and Chow are just two of the Hong Kongers I have much respect and admiration for; with ex-Stand News chief editor Chung Pui-kuen being another, and a fourth being former RTHK program producer Bao Choy, who yesterday began her final appeal over her conviction for making false statements to obtain vehicle records to make a documentary about the July 21st, 2019, Yuen Long attacks.   

 

The fact that Gwyneth Ho is currently a political prisoner, Chung Pui-kuen is on trial for sedition (and may well end up serving time being bars) and Bao was convicted for what many people don't see as a crime should tell you something about the state of journalism in Hong Kong. Put another way: it's not a surprise to see Hong Kong "languish near the bottom of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom ranking released on Wednesday’s World Press Freedom Day".

 

More specifically, Hong Kong "ranked 140th among the 180 regions in the international media watchdog’s latest ranking, trailing behind Colombia and Cameroon. [Meanwhile, (Mainland)] China ranked 179th, just above North Korea."  And while it's true that Hong Kong's ranking this year is eight positions higher than it was last year, it's only because press freedom had deteriorated even more in other territories rather than because the situation in Hong Kong had improved from a year ago!

 

As Cédric Alviani, East Asia bureau director of RSF pointed out, the international media watchdog noticed that 13 “press freedom defenders” (who include Gwyneth Ho and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai) had been detained under “trumped up charges” in Hong Kong.  In addition, the RSF "had observed “an increasing number of journalists in exile,” including those who made “a very difficult decision to leave their home due to increasing pressure from the government” for places including the UK and Taiwan."

 

Speaking of which: Taiwan is at number 35 in the RSF's press freedom ranking -- which makes it the highest ranked Asian territory.  For context and comparison: the top-ranked territory is Norway, the United Kingdom is positioned at number 25, the United States is ranked at number 45, South Korea is at number 47 -- and even Malaysia, whose press I don't consider all that free, is at number 73; a whopping 67 places higher than Hong Kong!   

The latest works by VA Wong Sir and Ah To say so much about the situation in Hong Kong, and "the Far East"

Remember VA Wong Sir and Ah To?  The two talented political cartoonists may have left Hong Kong but they are keeping their eye on what's happening in the city they love and continuing producing works that are say so much about the situation in this part of the world.  And in recent days, both of them have produced illustrations that I think are very much worth sharing with others.  

 

So without further ado, I present to you this from VA Wong Sir (who now is on Twitter as well as Facebook as well as Patreon) which points out that Hong Kong is not (yet) "back to normal" like the Hong Kong government (including the Hong Kong Tourism Board) would like you to believe due to existing pandemic regulations and restrictions (never mind the national security law):

 

And this from Ah To (who has a Twitter account but appears to be more active on Instagram), produced to "celebrate" the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st of this year, which was inspired by -- and updates -- Tse Tsan-tai's "The Situation in the Far East" of July 1898: 

N.B. To appreciate the details of the illustrations, particularly Ah To's, click on the images to view enlarge versions of them!

Taking time for self-care and further reflections about what Hong Kongers want

The closest thing I've seen to a rainbow in recent days

Or maybe it'd be this (Yes, there still are Lennon Walls about

in Hong Kong -- but mainly on the walls of private establishments)

Hot on the heels of the one year anniversaries of the 1 million persons anti-China extradition march of June 9th, a day that will go into infamy in Hong Kong (and which got me mulling the beginning of the end of the Hong Kong I love), and the death of Marco Leung came that for a massive 2 million (and one) protest march against the extradition bill that, if Hong Kong had a democracy, really should have made it game over for Carrie Lam and co.  But even while the most unpopular Hong Kong Chief Executive by far did withdraw that hated bill last October, the other four demands that the majority of Hong Kongers have been making for a year now remain unfulfilled.    

Worse, one year on, Hong Kong is feeling more and more like a police state, with so many freedoms being eroded even before the enactment of the security legislation the Chinese Communist regime seems utterly determined to impose on this rebellious territory whose people's hearts and minds it surely knows that it has lost.  To be sure, people still have more freedoms in Hong Kong than in Mainland China itself.  But you can't say a place feels free when, for two weeks in a row, a menacing convoy of police vehicles, including a water cannon truck and an armored truck, gets parked outside a public park, ready to roll into what is normally a busy shopping and dining district.  

Having spent quite a bit of time out on Monday, I decided to stay in for much of Tuesday -- and, consequently, missed not only the sight of that convoy of police vehicles but, also, at least one rainbow -- and in some cases two! -- viewable from various points in Hong Kong.  And as it so happened, the most eyecatching news reported that day actually occured thousands of miles away from Hong Kong -- along another section of the Chinese border, involving a clash between Chinese and Indian troops, involving rocks and clubs(!), that left at least 20 people dead on one side alone!  (Oh, and the North Koreans blew up a liason office -- can you imagine what would happen if this occured to the Liason Office in Hong Kong?!)  

I did venture out again yesterday though.  Among other things, I decided to practice self-care by treating myself to a viewing of a Hong Kong movie I had wanted to see for months (but couldn't for weeks because of the cinemas having been closed because of the Wuhan coronavirus).  Ray Yeung's beautifully understated Suk Suk made for an involving watch.  

But while it is a very good film, its viewing did leave me feeling rather sad.  Watching a Hong Kong film in these troubled times, I guess it's inevitable that one will see personal meaning in it.  In this case, there's a moment in the movie when the lead character (sensitively played by Tai Bo) talks about how he's done well for himself since escaping from Mainland China during the Cultural Revolution to Hong Kong.  He has a family, a home, enough money.  What more should he want?

Well, in his case, it would be the freedom to live the way he really wants, and openly -- since he's a gay man who's been so closeted all his life that he got himself married with children and one grandchild (on whom he dotes).  And, really, that's what a lot of Hong Kongers want: to be able to have the freedom to live the way they really want, to not have to pretend to be someone/something else that they really don't feel that they actually are (even if other people think that's the case), to love who and what they want (without being told it's wrong).  To feel free, you know, to sing the songs they like and not the ones they don't.  To feel happy and safe in their home.  Rainbow or not, what a wonderful world it then would be.

Two documentaries that benefit from being viewed on a big screen (Film reviews)

Most, if not all, movies benefit from being viewed on a big screen 

Into the Inferno (UK-Germany-Canada, 2016)

- Part of the HKIFF's Galas program

- Werner Herzog (who also scripted) and Clive Oppenheimer, co-directors 

It may have been made for Netflix, whose customers stream the movies they watch onto computer and smartphone screens or watch them on TV screens courtesy of DVDs, but Into the Inferno really is one of those documentaries that really is best viewed on a big theater screen.  An ambitious, sprawling work which transports its audience to far flung places with landscapes that can look incredibly unearthly, it also has truly incredible footage that not only shows the power of volcanoes but also how mesmerizingly as well as frighteningly beautiful lava can look when it churns about, erupts and/or flows out to envelope whole landscapes.

Peter Zeitlinger's cinematographer makes sure that Into the Inferno is no run of the mill documentary but what really makes certain of this is the distinctive imprint that director Werner Herzog (who also scripted this effort) leaves on it.  And while the German auteur may have given Professor Clive Oppenheimer a co-directing credit and had the Cambridge University volcanologist be the main man in front of the camera, the fact that this work takes pains to explore the spiritual side of volcanoes rather than just their scientific aspects is something that comes from Herzog steering the production towards subject matter that truly interests him.

Over the course of the film, Herzog and Oppenheimer -- who met in Antarctica, when Herzog was filming his Encounters at the End of the World (2007) -- journey to the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific, Indonesia (the country with the most volcanoes in the world), Iceland, Ethiopia and North Korea (home to an active volcano that all Koreans consider sacred).  In addition to getting up close with some really spectacular volcanoes and related physical features (such as caldera lakes), they also interact with a diverse group of individuals, including members of a cargo cult, outwardly super-patriotic North Koreans (who often act like they too belong to a cult), and paleoanthropologist Tim White and his dedicated crew as well as volcanologists from various countries.

In the hands of lesser (or plain different) filmmakers, the different sections of Into the Inferno wouldn't feel like they could all fit into a single work.  However, Herzog successfully weaves them into a pretty fascinating exploration of the passionate -- often to the point of obsessiveness -- human quest for meaning, all of which involve volcanoes in one way or another.  

My rating for the film: 8.0

Makala (France, 2017)

- Part of the HKIFF's Global Vision program

- Emmanuel Gras, director, scriptwriter and cinematographer

- With: Kabwita Kasongo, Lydie Kasongo

One of the sights that invariably strikes visitors to the African continent is of people -- men, women and children -- forced to walk far distances because they don't have money for public transportation, let alone a car or even motorcycle of their own.  Adding to the misery is that many of these people are effectively their own beasts of burden, carrying all manner of things on their heads as well as in their arms and on their backs.    

Even when the subject of Makala (charcoal in Kiswahili, the native language of its protagonist), a Congolese charcoal maker and seller by the name of Kabwita Kasongo, has use of a bicycle, it's to load with many heavy bags of charcoal and then push into town rather than actually ride.  Observing the massive effort this takes, one can't help but feel for him.  Knowing that considerable effort also is required beforehand to do such as cut down the trees whose wood then gets turned into charcoal gets one concluding that his is a life that so many of us would not be able to lead and endure for long at all.

While much of this affecting film is taken up documenting mundane activities, there are elements in it which can disturb despite being depicted in a matter of fact way rather than sensationalist manner.  One example is rat being part of the diet of the protagonist and his family.  Actually more upsetting though is how it can seem that the closer he gets to town (and supposed "civilization"), the more unpleasant Kabwita's encounters with his fellow humans get.  In addition, there are scenes in this documentary that get me questioning why he has so much faith in God when there seems to be so much inequality and suffering in this world.

Rather than look upon him merely as an unlucky wretch condemned to a Sisyphean existence, however, I came away from my viewing of Emmanuel Gras' documentary thinking that Kabwita Kasongo is one of those heroic as well as admirable individuals who, somehow, against the odds, manages to not only eke out an honest living but also provide for his wife Lydie and their children, and continue to dream of, and plan for, a better future for them all.  And it is my sincere hope that he's been amply rewarded for agreeing to appear -- nay, star -- in this work which has gone on to garner a number of accolades, including the Critics' Week Grand Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival.

My rating for this film: 7.0

Game for a laugh outside a Yau Ma Tei mahjong parlour?!

An image pretty much guaranteed to get the attention

of those who pass by it (and put a smile on faces?)! :)

A few hours ago, the association football team I've supported since 1978 basically ended any real chance it had of winning the English Premier League this season in a game that it didn't just lose but also saw two members of the team sent off and a crucial player injured. After trying to destroy the Arsene Wenger bobble head my sister gave me -- but not being completely successfully in doing so because it turned out to be made of super strong stuff! -- I've decided to try another way to feel better: i.e., by thinking of and/or looking at something humorous.  

While looking through my photo archive, I found just the thing -- and reckon that the imaginative caricature I snapped while walking in Yau Ma Tei earlier this week is so cool that it's actually worth sharing on this blog (and yes, you can click on the photo to view an enlarged version of it)!  

Adorning an outer wall of a mahjong parlour is this large illustration which depicts Chinese president Xi Jinping, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Russian president Vladimir Putin and American president Barack Obama seated at a mahjong table.  And to judge by the chips on the table, Xi and Obama look to be doing well -- and this sense is given strength by Xi and Obama looking quite a bit happier than Abe and an especially disgruntled appearing, judo outfit-wearing Putin!

Just the image of this foursome playing mahjong together would bring smiles to the face of many.  But that wasn't enough for the ambitious artist, who also has North Korea's "dear leader" Kim Jong Un, popcorn in hand, being one of the game's spectators, German chancellor Angela Merkel at the party serving cupcakes, and the ghost of Saddam Hussein hanging on to the back of Barack Obama's chair!  

And while I can't identify the eighth personality in the picture, I'd easily imagine that he's a political heavyweight from the African continent.  If his hair were whiter, I'd say that it was supposed to be Nelson Mandela.  What do you think?! ;b

Above the Line: People and Places in the DPRK (North Korea) and related attempts to understand North Koreans

Above the Line: People and Places in the DPRK (North Korea) 
is a British Council exhibition taking place at 
the Hong Kong Arts Centre through to the 28th of this April

All the photos in the exhibition were taken by

British photographer-filmmaker-travel writer Nick Danziger

For at least the first two decades of my life, North Korea was one of the countries that my passport was not valid for.  In recent years, I've been allowed to visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- as the country is formally called -- but the only time I've been on North Korean soil was very briefly, when I visited the Korean Joint Security Area's Conference Row.

Over the years though, I've viewed a number of films about this famously secretive country -- including Songs from the North (which I saw earlier this month), and Daniel Gordon's The Games of Their Lives, a fascinating and entertaining documentary about the North Korean football team that played in the 1966 World Cup Finals and won the hearts of quite a few non-North Korean football fans over the course of the tournament -- and also done such as attended talks about this largely isolated land by people who've visited it (such as a Koryo Tours staff member).

In addition, while living in Tanzania (which -- for those who didn't know -- had a socialist past), I met a few North Koreans, all of whom worked for and at their country's embassy there.  If truth be told, the conversations I had with these folks tended to be on the surreal side -- what with their wearing enameled badges with their country's flags and leaders' faces on them, and forced fixed smiles for much of the time, while trying to foist copies of thin books purportedly written by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il into my hands. And then there was the time that I found out that South Korea was referred by them as "the puppet regime"...!

So it actually wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the films I've seen about this country with a population of 23 million (notably those made by the British Daniel Gordon, whose Crossing the Line, about American defectors to North Korea, I've also seen) actually give a more human account of its citizens than my actual personal encounters with them!

Above the Line: People and Places in the DPRK (North Korea) is another offering from Britons (in this case Nick Danziger and writer Rory MacLean, the latter of whom wrote the text for the exhibition) that tries to present a balanced view of the country and its people, and largely succeeds in doing so.  Featuring photos of people at play and at work in variety of settings (including at the beach, by roadsides, in a hair salon and even at a dolphinarium), they purport to show ordinary North Koreans -- but one still gets the feeling that they may be more privileged than many others of their fellow countrymen and -women.

In any event, it's interesting to see certain things that wouldn't be considered normal in much of the rest of the world such as the almost total lack of advertising about in the cities as well as countryside, the similar dearth of conspicuous branding on clothes, and the roads -- again, both in the cities and also the countryside -- being close to devoid of vehicles.  And while a case could be made for all of the previously mentioned things not necessarily being bad things, it's also quite noticeable that the physique of the North Koreans in the photos appear unexpectedly different from their South Korean equivalents -- in that the former appear thinner, not just less fat but also less toned and muscular in general.

Because so little is known for sure about North Korea, I do nurse a curiosity to visit it to see and experience things for myself there.  At the same time though, because I can't get away from feeling that so much of what I will get to see, hear and otherwise sense there will be controlled, stage managed and censored, my strong suspicion that a trip there won't actually yield many insights, with the result being that North Korea will still largely stay an enigma to me afterwards.

There is indeed a part of me that wants to believe that life can be okay there for many people but I can't help suspecting that this is not the case.  Otherwise, why is there such a need for the North Korean state to control images of it, and the movement of people -- visitors to the country but also, and more importantly, its very denizens?

Songs from the North at the Hong Kong International Film Festival

View from a hut in the Joint Security Area's Conference Row 
of the cement strip marking the border between South and 
North Korea at the Korean Demilitarized Zone

Songs from the North (South Korea-Portugal-USA, 2014)

- From the Reality Bites programme

- Yoo Soon Mi, dir.

- Featuring Yoo Soon Mi, Yoo Young Choon, various unnnamed North Koreans

For centuries, Korea was known as the Hermit Kingdom. While that label doesn't fit contemporary South Korea, it still does the regime to its north -- one that many outsiders are consequently very curious about (including Hong Kongers, as can be witnessed by this being the first sold-out screening that I attended at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival).

In this context, any film that genuinely tries to inform -- rather than pokes fun in a cheap, often racist manner -- about North Korea is truly welcome.  And there's little doubting the sincerity of South Korean-born, US-based multi-disciplinary artist-filmmaker Yoo Soon Mi's intentions.  

The daughter of a South Korean man who fought against the North Koreans but also had good friends defect to North Korea because they genuinely believed that its system would produce a more democratic and egalitarian society, she made three trips to North Korea herself -- albeit all on organized tours and officially as nothing more than a foreign tourist who sometimes professed to not be able to understand all the Korean that was being spoken to her there.

Video footage she shot of an interview with her father (that may well be the most revelatory sections of the film) and on her trips are interspersed with archival news footage and also scenes from North Korean movies and emotional -- and, often to us outsiders, unintentionally funny -- moments from such as public concert performances that looked to have been broadcast on North Korean TV.  Irritatingly, Yoo looks to have sought to explicitly differentiate what she personally filmed from the others by deliberately making the latter have scratches and other technical defects.

Yoo's North Korean footage is usually of mundane situations, such as two men playing billiards, a woman cleaning up in a restaurant and, at various times, people walking along roads largely bereft of vehicles or across wide, open, mainly empty spaces.  Of these, that which she films from a bus are particularly interesting and also troubling -- not least because more than once, there can be heard injunctions from the tour guide or some such official against doing so.

On the one hand, the reputability of a documentary about North Korea automatically gets called into question if everything that appears in it has been officially sanctioned by the ruling regime.  At the same time though, surely the question needs to be asked -- or at least considered -- as to how ethical it is to put innocent (North Korean) people into danger by doing things that they have been told to ensure that their foreign charges don't do.

This is all the more salient when what results from is actually a work as sketchy as Songs from the North. Yes, it's a thought-provoking work -- but it's also not terribly well made.  Indeed, watching it often felt rather frustratingly like a tease, involving trying to see potentitally intriguing scenes through thick glass that can only hint, and sometimes even obscure and distort, rather than enlighten.

My rating for this film: 6.0

Veterans/The Military (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

In military terms, a demilitarized zone (DMZ) is where military activity is not permited. So it's somewhat ironic that the Korean Demilitarized Zone -- which I visited on my recent Korea vacation -- is one of the places in the world where I've most greatly felt as well as seen the military's frankly quite intimidating presence. (In contrast, contrary to the fears of many pre-1997 Handover, the Chinese military are pretty much close to invisible in Hong Kong post its being handed back to China by the British...!)

Miles before I got to the very center of the Korean DMZ in the form of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) -- where I got to briefly step on North Korean soil -- in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of Panmunjom, the military presence was already discernible in the form of such as regular sentry posts and miles of barbed wire posted along the sections of the Han River that acts as a natural border between South and North Korea (see the photo at the top of this Photo Hunt entry).

But it was upon getting into the DMZ itself that things really did start feeling rather hairy -- with the situation feeling pretty tense after we were issued a series of injunctions, including "don't point" (because your pointing hand resembles a gun from afar and the North Korean border guards might shoot you as a result) as well as "don't take photos in the area unless you are first given the okay to do so".

Re the two other photos in this entry: the middle photo is of the "Truce Village", with the blue huts containing such as the Military Armistic Commission (MAC) Conference Room -- where talks take place between representatives of the two Koreas -- being under United Nations jurisdiction and the gray hut to the side and large building in the background being North Korea's. And the final photo of this series of three is of a combat-ready South Korean soldier standing in the North Korean side of the actual MAC Conference Room. (The two sides take turns to man it, it seems.)

Incidentally, one of my favorite Korean films is entitled and revolves around the Joint Security Area. Containing moments of wonderful humanity along with painful division, angst and pathos, the 2000 film by Park Chan Wook is one that digs deep to provide audience with revelatory glimpses of the Korean psyche. And yes, I have to say that the film was largely behind my wanting to visit the JSA at some point in my life.

Korean sights (photo-essay)

I'm baack! To be precise, I've returned from an all too short Korean vacation that, among other things, saw me actually on the North Korean side of the border for a few seconds as well as visiting three UNESCO world heritage sites in two days and going on a stroll along the banks of the restored Cheonggyecheon stream.

Over the course of just a few days, I came across many beautiful, interesting and downright amazing sights -- so much so that I ended up literally taking hundreds of photos. The following eight will hopefully give you a taste of what I've seen and where I've been this past week -- and also whet your appetite to view more of my Korean shots (because, ready or not, I do plan to put up quite a few more on this blog before too long!):-

I got the feeling that this vacation would be
a good one after I serendipitously came across
this newly built statue of King Sejong
while out strolling on my first evening in Korea!

View from inside a courtyard in Suwon's
Hwaseong Haenggung on a beautiful fall day

As impressive as Hwaseong Haenggung may be,
it actually isn't Suwon's major attraction --
rather, that honor goes to the Hwaseong Fortress
on whose close-to-6 kilometers long walls I walked

I'm not sure if I was particularly lucky but
I witnessed plenty of ceremonies being enacted
on my Korean visit -- including this one at the
Jongmyo royal shrine in Seoul

Close up of some of the architectural detail on view
at Changdeokgung -- one of Seoul's five royal palaces
(but the only one to be UNESCO world heritage listed)

Colorfully costumed sentries at Daehanmun,
the main gate of Deoksugung (a palace
whose walls I regularly passed by on such as
walks from my hotel to a nearby subway station!)

Real life guard on the North Korean side of
Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)

Ducks swim in Cheonggyecheon,
Seoul's wonderfully rejuvenated inner city stream