Hong Kong style.
Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators braved torrential rain to hold their largest rally in weeks [last Sunday], a show of strength led by more moderate protest leaders who advocated peaceful resistance to Beijing’s tightening grip on the city and sought to ramp up pressure on officials to respond to their demands.
Hundreds of thousands of mainly black-clad protesters of all ages rallied in Victoria Park, the starting point of some of the biggest demonstrations through 11 weekends of unrest, with crowds overflowing into the streets. The organizers said more than 1.7 million people attended the rally.
On that rally, here’s Leung Kwok-hung, a veteran of Hong Kong’s years-long campaign for just the simple respect for the terms of semi-autonomy to which the People’s Republic of China agreed when Great Britain handed the city over to the PRC:
If we have to break the law to exercise our constitutional rights, it means the government is exploiting our constitutional rights.
Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters?
A major question, though—apart from whether Xi, or his subordinate, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, will even pretend to listen to the demonstrators—is this: does PRC President Xi Jinping have the same respect for human life as did Republic of the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos when the canonical People Power Revolution went in?
That’s an open question. Marcos, even in the depths of his reign, never ran “reeducation” camps. Xi is doing precisely that, that interring millions in Xinjiang Province, and so did his hero and early predecessor Mao Tse-tung.
Marcos—indeed, no Philippine President, including the current Duterte—ever ran anything like Tiananmen Square with hundreds to thousands butchered by the nation’s army. Xi’s predecessor, Yang Shangkun and that one’s second, PLA CinC Deng Xiaoping, have, and Xi has shown no regret over that atrocity. Presently, Xi has elements of the PLA—of which he also has been CinC since 2012—massing and drilling just outside Hong Kong. (Yes, I’m aware those units officially are paramilitary. It’s a distinction without a difference.)
The Hong Kong people are showing great courage, and they deserve our overt support.