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31 July 2019
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25 July 2019
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Organiser vows to push ahead with Yuen Long march after Hong Kong police refuse permission, citing safety concerns
Yuen Long returns to business as usual, but anxiety still lingers over Sunday (July 21) night’s attacks.
HONG KONG — Hong Kong police have banned a protest march planned for Saturday (July 27) in the northern town of Yuen Long in a rare move fuelled by fears of further violence, sparking accusations of “political” action by the force.
In a letter issued to the march organisers, police said the rejection was to ensure public safety, public order and to protect the rights and freedoms of others.
The decision came after white-clad men, some of whom were suspected to be triad members, attacked MTR passengers and protesters returning from an earlier march in the city centre last Sunday.
The mob’s target seemed to be demonstrators in black, who had marched against the now-suspended extradition bill, but the indiscriminate assaults led to at least 45 people being injured, throwing a wave of anxiety over the rural district. Twelve people were arrested over the incident.
Saturday’s planned march was to condemn the horrifying violence that night, but community leaders and politicians warned of further chaos.
Police said the march’s destination was located next to several villages and they had reason to believe clashes would erupt between the protesters and villagers in light of the recent developments.
Organisers had failed to adjust the route or provide a back-up one and could not prove they were able to ensure safety and order through deploying the sufficient number of marshals as requested. The protest might also significantly affect the rights and freedoms of residents in Yuen Long, which is densely-populated with shops along the roads, police added.
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22 July 2019
Excerpts from:
It’s not often a piece you write becomes more relevant over time. Here’s a piece I wrote on HK’s ‘patriotic’ triads-for-hire, quoting research by
. The scale of violence in Yuen Long and their lack of impunity puts it in a whole new cateogry
The Thugs of Mainland China
Last Friday, as the Occupy Central protests convulsed Hong Kong, James Bang, a twenty-eight-year-old digital-strategy consultant, found himself holding down the front line in the district of Mong Kok, his arms linked with other young protesters as they fended off surging groups of attackers. The assailants shoved the protesters, spat in their faces, and shouted, “Motherfuckers!” and “Go home!” Their accents signalled to Bang that they were from Guangdong, across the border, and they wore bags slung across their chests, a style common in mainland China. He was convinced that they weren’t locals. “Hong Kong people don’t spit on Hong Kong people,” he told me over Skype. “In Hong Kong, they spit on the roads.”
Bang had been out on the streets for five days. By day two, he’d lost his job. After considering the future of his newborn daughter, he had decided that it was more important to support the Occupy movement, which was pressuring China to grant Hong Kong universal suffrage for the 2017 chief-executive election without allowing Beijing to vet candidates. When the battle in Mong Kok finally wound down, the supply station Bang had been manning was destroyed, and thousands of dollars’ worth of battery chargers, medical supplies, and food had been lost. “It was like a coördinated, planned attack,” Bang said, noting that the men were wearing identical masks. “They were basically clearing the site, removing the barricades, pulling down all the posters, and then trying to clear the people later. So they were really doing the job the police wished they could do.”
By the end of that night, eighteen people had been injured and the police had arrested nineteen people, eight of whom the authorities said had ties to Hong Kong’s organized criminal gangs, known as triads. Conspiracy theories began proliferating through the city’s vibrant social-media networks. Some people circulated photographs purporting to identify some of the attackers as undercover policemen; others sent out Facebook advertisements promising remuneration for the attacks (“Bonus: Tear down supply station $500 [(sixty-four U.S. dollars)], Successfully cause chaos $1000 [(a hundred and twenty-nine U.S. dollars)]”). The deputy chairman of the Legislative Council’s security panel, James To Kun-sun, channelled this popular outrage, accusing the government of colluding with triads, a charge that was denied by the Secretary for Security, Lai Tung-kwok. A teaching assistant at the University of Hong Kong, Kitty Ho, began to compile a database containing evidence of collusion with triads, with the aim of lodging a complaint about the behavior of Hong Kong’s official police force. When we last spoke, she had received twenty separate cases to investigate. “I just can’t let it go,” she told me over Skype, sounding weary.
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weehingthong 