Hong Kong: China says it will not recognise UK overseas passports:

lovinghk:

(source: the guardian | 30 jul 2020) 

China will not recognise the British national (overseas) passport as a legal travel document, raising the prospect that the 3 million Hong Kong citizens eligible for the passport will be banned from leaving Hong Kong by the Chinese government.

The warning was made at a press conference by the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, in which he also warned that it was hard to imagine a global Britain that bypassed or excluded China. Decoupling from China would mean decoupling from growth and the future, he suggested.

Hongkongers are being kept hostage by CCP

Hong Kong Residents Are Erasing Their Own Internet Histories Before China’s Big Crackdown:

lovinghk:

(source: vice.com | 20 jun 2020) Kedros Ng has lived in Hong Kong his entire life. He studied engineering after leaving school and worked hard to build his civil engineering business from scratch.

Despite an unblemished criminal record, the 31-year-old last month downloaded over 10 gigabytes of data from his Facebook account and deleted it forever.

“You never know if the Chinese Communist Party of the Hong Kong government will dig through your history and arrest you for ‘harming national security,’” Ng told VICE News.

The reason for all this sudden self-censorship? The impending national security law that Beijing is about to impose on Hong Kong.

Officially, there is no online censorship in Hong Kong today. either by the Communist Party or by the Hong Kong government. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t digital censorship or surveillance of the city’s citizens. It just doesn’t happen the way it does on the mainland, where authorities simply block access to problematic content or remove offending comments.

“Censorship in Hong Kong is exercised by a climate of intimidation,” Kong Tsung Gan, an activist living in the city, told VICE News. “You see this most clearly in the mainstream media, many of which are beholden to the Party or fear that if they offend the Party, their business will suffer. The Party already directly owns a large portion of the book distribution and retail market.”

EU response to latest China- Hong Kong crisis cowardly and unprincipled:

lovinghk:

(source: the irish times | 16 jun 2020)

… It is difficult to absorb the fact that Trump and Johnson are showing more leadership than Angela Merkel. It would be extremely sad and disappointing, as she approaches the end of her political career, if her much widely and deserved respected political legacy would be tainted by her failure to do what is right by Hong Kong.

Given the gravity of the threat posed to the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong citizens, it is imperative that the EU acts now to dissuade China from its current course of action. By September it may well be too late to do anything.

This week’s plenary session of the European Parliament will debate Hong Kong. MEP’s should pressurise the EU Commission and Council into postponing the Leipzig summit if China persists in imposing national security laws in Hong Kong. However, more is required. Despite the current economic threats that we are facing arising from the current pandemic crisis, the EU still remains the most powerful trading bloc in the world. We should use that considerable economic power and join with the US, the UK, Canada and Australia in warning China that we will impose political and economic sanctions on them.

If we fail to prevent China destroying Hong Kong’s autonomy, its next target will be Taiwan and Chinese interference in that country will have even more horrific consequences for global peace and security.

by John Cushnahan Former Fine Gael MEP And European Parliament Rapporteur for Hong Kong 1997-2004.

gotham-ruaidh:

hormonallyours:

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: 六四事件, liùsì shìjiàn), were student-led demonstrations in Beijing (the capital of the People’s Republic of China) for the establishment of basic human and press rights and against the Communist-led Chinese government in mid-1989. More broadly, it refers to the popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that period, sometimes called the ‘89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: 八九民运, bājiǔ mínyùn). The protests were forcibly suppressed after Chinese Premier Li Peng declared martial law. In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators trying to block the military’s advance towards Tiananmen Square. The crowds were stunned that the army was using live ammunition and reacted by hurling insults and projectiles. The troops used expanding bullets, prohibited by international law for use in warfare, which expand upon entering the body and create larger wounds. The number of civilian deaths was internally estimated by the Chinese government to be near or above 10,000.

The Communist Party of China forbids discussion of the Tiananmen Square protests and has taken measures to block or censor related information. Textbooks have little, if any, information about the protests. After the protests, officials banned controversial films and books, and shut down many newspapers. Within a year, 12% of all newspapers, 8% of publishing companies, 13% of social science periodicals and more than 150 films were banned or shut down. The government also announced it had seized 32 million contraband books and 2.4 million video and audio cassettes. Access to media and Internet resources on the subject are restricted or blocked by censors.

June 4, 1989-2020

We Hongkongers have commemorated Tiananmen Square Massacre for 31 years. This year we defy a police ban to gather, we stand up against CCP’s oppression in Hong Kong.

lovinghk:

2020.6.4 hong kong(work by artohk | 4 jun 2020)

Hong Kong Protester: I Can’t Breathe:

lovinghk:

2019.9.29  “i can’t breathe” admiralty, hong kong

all lives matter.

(source: finance fellow fb) 

On September 29th 2019, a Hong Kong Police officer was kneeling on the back of a young protester’s neck. The youngster was saying “I can’t breathe” multiple times but he was ignored by that police office.

Up to now, the HK police officer who applied such violence has not faced any consequences.

Video Source: 城市廣播 City Broadcasting Channel