In Hong Kong there was a sit-in following a rally of a half a million citizens on July 1, the anniversary of the handover of the former British colony Hong Kong to China in 1997. China has promised Hong Kong a direct vote for the next chief executive in 2017 instead of election via committee, but still insists that a committee approve the candidates. Over 500 citizens arrested later.
“There were 98,600 police on the street, what’s that about!”, said Edith Chung, ordinarily a pretty much conforming Hong Kong resident but fired into street activism over that weekend of July, the perennial march protest day for Hong Kongers to express their concern over the territories degree of autonomy.
“There were chants of 689, which really is a profanity against chief executive CY Leung – he only got 689 votes which brought him into his present position, hardly a landslide,” continued Ms Chung.
The organisers of the march announced at 11pm on the day that they had concluded that the march number, conservatively, reached 510,000 marchers. As usual there were other numbers cast about, the crowd who joined the march offered opinions of 700- to 800,000 people. While a mapping scan using Youtube graphics pushed the number on the street to 1.3 million. Whichever way it is seen, there were a lot of people on the street that day.
“From my point of view, because most Hong Kong people are quite mild, these numbers show the biggest number after the protests against the article 23 law, when people also wanted the then CE Mr Tung to resign. In the recent past, over about ten years, a steady number of people were seen marching but this year amazingly huge numbers went to the streets which tells of a civil awakening. This has a lot to do with the recent White Paper release, there is a fear of Hong Kong losing its freedoms and the right to rule ourselves.
“We are supposed to have these two systems in operation but the White Paper brings us more in line with Biejing and has us depending on the ‘grace granted by a king’ whereas it should be a right set in stone so nowadays we do not feel good about that ‘grace’ but want everything put down in black and white so we can really have our own system. Also, we are speaking out for one-man-one-vote for the CE election as the target for 2017 and many people fear that if we do not come out this time we may not have another chance.”
Days before the march the territories lawyers, include high court judges, wore black armbands and held a silent protest, unprecedented.
“On top of that people are also concerned by what is going on in Legco where the chairman of the finance committee stopped the filibustering as happened on the final day of the North East Land Development budget meeting,” added Ms Chung. “The pan-democrats went and told the chairman off, in front of his table, at least 20 councillors. The vote was taken immediately which was taken advantage of by those wanting to use the system who were still present and the budget was passed. If that is how the meetings are handled it is a kind of violence, because the detailed procedural rules were not followed.”
On the day of that final meeting there were about 5,000 people outside Legco protesting against the budget. It is now presumed that after passing that, other budgets of the Hong Kong government will pass on constructions that are causing public strife, the artificial island off Lantau, the additional new airport runway, and the suspect technology and expensive waste incinerator.
“Actually, about that land project people are not asking for the stopping of the plan but only want a revision of the plan. For example, one group has made a map showing there is no need to take over agricultural lands or tear entire villages down. In fact, there is a golf course no one is using. But, no response from government at all and the Hong Kong people think the government is ignoring people’s voices,” she notes.
Even Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, President of the Legislative Council, spoke out days ago that some parliament members already proposed that because of this budget proposal there are too many problems to resolve so why is it the government does not listen to the people of Hong Kong; why not postpone this budget to handle it better and for the committee to discuss more urgent daily life issues as budget items such as the Queen Mary Hospital needs and educational needs, then there would be less argument?
The finance committee chairman is almost kidnapping the issue as the chairman has the right to change the agenda if needed but no one is pushing that despite that everyone knows it can be done. This adds to why so many people came out to march this year, to protest the general violence being done by government and in Legco
“Not only that, it is ridiculous that outside Legco where there is a public area for protest, that ‘facility’, because of the third budget meeting where the crowd rushed the doors, they decided this time to block the entrance and nearby civil square where banners can normally be hung, that too was blocked as well.
“On top of that they pushed the marching people onto pedestrian paths but with many more people coming the police were asked to block the protest, they did not block to road, they pushed us to one side and the crowd was crushed and people became hot-headed and began agitating more. Believe it or not there were CID officers among the crowd, without badges, and they aroused the crowd further encouraging people into disobedience and direct confrontation with police. It happened that those out-of-uniform police were surrounded and were being taken into custody with the arrested protesters but were identified and ‘rescued’ by police. These ‘under cover’ provocateurs were identified by photographic evidence by people in the crowd.”
The organisers used a big truck for equipment etc and it got stuck and the crowd began chanting “hoylo, hoylo”, meaning “open the road”, with a rhythm… When the driver jumped down for a while to check something he was taken by the police for the silly reason of ‘not turning off the engine while stopped’!
“The government is threatening to arrest the leaders of the so-called occupy movement. Meanwhile the Chinese government asked those people who are close to them, in various different organisations, to submit letters to police to outplay the 800,000 marchers with one of their spokespersons saying there are another 7 million who did not go out to protest so the protest figure of 800,000 is not representative and we say, just like CY Leung who only got 689 votes so he was not really elected by the people of Hong Kong,” ended Ms Chung.
