Deteriorating situation in Hong Kong

轉載: Stephen HongKong

Dear friends around the world, 

We wish to alert you to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Hong Kong, especially in the past few days. It has been 11 months since the current wave of protests began in June 2019. 

1. One of the very first protesters being charged ‘rioting’ is sentenced to 4 years in jail today, even though he pleaded guilty to seek a shorter jail term. Just a few days ago another 230 protesters were arrested, adding up to over 8,300 Hong Kong citizens being arrested thus far. Almost 600 of them are being charged ‘rioting’ – more citizens are being charged daily, and many protesters are now going through the trials.

2. A female protester testified that she was gang raped by polices in the police station after being arrested, she has since received abortion and exiled to Taiwan. The police openly denounced her accusation as a fake one and dropped the investigation, they have claimed that she is now listed as a 'wanted person' and planned to arrest her instead.

3. The ‘Independent Police Complaints Council’ has finally released a long overdue report, in response to the tremendous amount of complaints to police brutality. To summarize, the report simply suggests that the police generally acted according to guidelines, even though it is recognized globally that police brutality in the past 11 months have been severely harming human rights in the city and the police has been suppressing protests with inappropriate violence and they have not been following the guidelines. The report also went as far to claim that the 12 real round bullets shot by the police during the protests were all justified.

4. The Hong Kong legislature’s pro-Beijing president violently removed the duty of a pro-democracy committee head as filibustering has been going on and the Beijing authorities have been fiercely condemning the democrats. The Rules of Procedure for the lawmakers is once again heavily violated.

5. The police force in Hong Kong is also escalating its brutal violence directed against reporters in the past two weeks, as captured by the media.

6. The government and the lawmakers set to pass the ‘National Anthem Law’ on 27th May. The bill will be substantially threatening freedom of expression in Hong Kong.

7. The bill granting a huge budget for the police to purchase more weapons to suppress protests is passed by the lawmakers yesterday.

8. The history paper of the ‘Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination’ is heavily condemned by the authority, as one of the questions is deemed to be ‘hurting (Chinese) national sentiments’. The Education Bureau has decided to delete the question altogether.

9. On Mother’s Day (last Sunday), a young independent journalist aged 13 was arrested when he was reporting the protests. The Labour Department has since accused him to be working illegally.