9 comments

  • camgunz 1596 days ago
    Yeah this POV is totally backwards. HKPF attempted to arrest students in university dorms, and HK protestors stopped them. HKPF fired over 2500 rounds of tear gas, enough to kill birds flying overhead. Disappointing to see such a CCP-friendly skew from a venerable American journalism outfit (maybe that's being too generous these days though).
    • jimworm 1596 days ago
      Attempted to enter the dorms to arrest nobody in particular, without a warrant. After seeing the past few months' video evidence of police brutality, fear and resistance seem somewhat justified.

      Personally I haven't yet imagined a way out that satisfies all sides. The fear of police seems deeply ingrained in the population and no current or former protester believes they would be treated fairly if the movement abandons any of the demands. The government, fearful of reprisal from the ruthless Beijing elite, are unwilling to grant any concessions to the protest demands. The police are also deeply fearful of an independent judicial investigation into their activities, and must maintain a state of disorder, increasing the government's dependence on police so that they will not launch an investigation. It seems like the situation has reached a Nash equilibrium and the whole ship is doomed to continue sinking.

      • mgamache 1596 days ago
        "without a warrant" is a warrant needed? It's US and UK law, but not sure it's HK.
        • late2part 1596 days ago
          Criminal procedure in Hong Kong - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Criminal_procedure_in_Hong_Kong Jump to Power of arrest - But before an officer can actually arrest anyone, he or she is required by law to request an arrest warrant from a magistrate. If not ...
        • sjg007 1596 days ago
          Pretty sure Hong Kong police need warrants.
    • xwolfi 1596 days ago
      Dude it's not so straight. First our universities aren't somehow in an ephemeral plane absent of any police jurisdiction, second it seems the number of petrol bombs (I heard 400) was enormous pointing to some large capacity being built up there (I remind you they are more lethal than tear gas round) and third this standoff produce 0 positive effect in retrospect.

      I'm all for opposing our communist overlords, but they might not be convinced to listen if we hurl molotov and cry at birds rather than show a reasonable front, which is what ended the extradition law in the first place.

      • camgunz 1596 days ago
        > First our universities aren't somehow in an ephemeral plane absent of any police jurisdiction

        Right but you need a warrant, which the police did not have and never got, because they weren't there to arrest anyone in particular, because they had no cause, because this is a terror tactic.

        > second it seems the number of petrol bombs (I heard 400) was enormous pointing to some large capacity being built up there

        It's real easy to build a molotov, especially if you have a bunch of protestors working in an assembly line. Which is fortunate, because that's probably the only thing that kept the cops from arresting scores of innocent students to be beaten and raped in jail.

        People have the right to defend themselves. HKPF are genuinely a threat to Hongkongers and have lost all legitimacy. It's a true tragedy, but the time for excuses and apologists is past.

      • neonIcon 1596 days ago
        Not sure what fantasy land you live in but it is far from ended.. Do you really think the CCP won't eventually ram it through?
  • djvu9 1596 days ago
    This headline is completely misleading. Those who "took over" the universities are the students who actually LIVE there. And those who "took over" the financial district are people who work there: they just protest downstairs during their lunch time.

    You don't take over your home or office because you f*king own it.

  • red2awn 1596 days ago
    The bigger news is the police attacked an university in Hong Kong. Thousands of rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets were fired.
    • mortenjorck 1596 days ago
      WSJ’s editorial staff must really want to avoid upsetting anyone in the CCP. Following tweets from people on the ground, like AFP correspondent Xinqi Su (https://twitter.com/xinqisu), Quartz reporter Mary Hui (https://twitter.com/maryhui), academic researcher on networked protests Zeynep Tufekci (https://twitter.com/zeynep), or quite surprisingly Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski (https://twitter.com/pinboard), paint a starkly different picture from the article.
    • justicezyx 1596 days ago
      Wow, HK police, backed from Chinese gov, is desperate to attach an university! WTF are they thinking? Why provoke students in campus... No idea what's going on.

      PS: I am shocked by this activity. Even during the communism revolution, the government has left the university intact. The HK policy lost their mind...

      • flyingfences 1596 days ago
        I've heard theories that they were after HK's main internet exchange, which is hosted on the campus. I'm not so sure that's a priority for them. I'd be more inclined to believe a "control of academia" angle - to put a limit on "credible" reports and opinions from HK.

        The real aim was probably the students. Public perception, especially among the mainland camp, is that this is mostly a youth protest (but from what I've heard, it's far from solely a youth protest). Back in August, they were all saying that the protests would die down and fizzle out once the semester started (which obviously didn't end up happening). In their eyes, the educated youth are the ones "driving" the protests. In their eyes, taking and suppressing the university would be a strike at the core of the pro-HK movement. That didn't work, and now their move is backfiring into further publicity and support for Hong Kong.

      • simlevesque 1596 days ago
        HK police are PLA soldiers.
        • neonIcon 1596 days ago
          Exactly this. There was a video released yesterday on the HK subreddit showing what seemed to be a special unit of "police" who bore no badges or any identification past riot shields emblazoned with "police" at the university. These dudes looked huge compared to everyone else there.
          • p_l 1596 days ago
            China uses the same "Ministry of Interior Armed Forces" system as Soviet Union did. They are kept separate from PLA so that they can be the thugs without contaminating real army, and the popular opinion follows on this.

            So I suspect it's all interior forces, not PLA.

      • naringas 1596 days ago
        mainland China is teaching HK how the world actually works. might makes right.

        (economic 'prosperity' for the masses is a form of might, but so is violence)

    • homarp 1596 days ago
      as http://www.hkix.net/hkix/whatishkix.htm indicates, CUHK hosts Hong Kong Internet exchange (HKiX).
    • 8bitsrule 1596 days ago
      History note: The US was tear-gassing universities over 50 years ago. From helicopters.
  • neonIcon 1596 days ago
    My understanding is that the HK Internet exchange for Hong Kong is hosted at the university. Would taking that down black out Hong Kong?
    • iudqnolq 1596 days ago
      Presumably cables go into and out of the exchange and could be disrupted at a number of easier to access points. Others say they want to install surveillance hardware but if the Chinese government had that kind of hardware lying around wouldn't they have installed it before the protests?
  • opinionhk 1596 days ago
    May I suggest your guys to take a look this interview "Will violence kill Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement? | Conflict Zone" over YouTube? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9nNeO0yWyk
  • hirundo 1596 days ago
    These protests show the pros and cons of colonialism. Con, in that Hong Kong's differences from the mainland are the fuel for this deadly conflict. Pro, in that these differences are behind this island becoming one of the most productive spots on Earth. The flourishing of these people would likely not have happened had Britain not leased it for 99 years. Even if China obliterates the difference, it has been irreversibly infected by the ideologies of the colonist.

    What would the world look like if we could dial back the level of colonialism over the last 2k years? Hong Kong makes a case for such cross-pollination as a human accelerant.

  • daodedickinson 1596 days ago
    Still incredibly pessimistic that Hong Kongers could somehow win a war for independence... or that anything short of that could win a future of safety for these "protestors"

    Just last night I felt guilty for buying something made in China but still did it again... and there certainly wasn't an alternative made anywhere else on the shelf

    • tossAfterUsing 1596 days ago
      > wasn't an alternative made anywhere else on the shelf

      was it a needed thing or a wanted thing? if the former, consider making it yourself & selling it as a not-from-china product

    • flyingfences 1596 days ago
      I think the aim at this point is not to win outright independence, but to re-secure the autonomy that they are accustomed to and ride it out until the Communist mainland government collapses. (Which may or may not happen...)
  • adultSwim 1595 days ago
    If we did any of this in the US, we would all be shot.
  • nemo44x 1596 days ago
    Protesting and other symbols of resistance are fine but it won't change anything until they form an insurgency. If they are serious about change it will take a violent course of actions to make it happen. Kosovo wouldn't have become an independent country if it weren't for citizens arming themselves and waging a guerrilla insurgency against their enemies.This of course means many thousands will have to die.
    • skrebbel 1596 days ago
      This is ridiculous nonsense.

      Eg the entire European concept of "social democracy" came about through unions doing non-violent strikes in the early 20th century. Sure, there was some violence here and there but no armed insurgency. They tried it armed in Eastern Europe and look where that got them.

      I know less about American history but it is my understanding that equal rights for people of colour, various sexual preferences etc all came about through non-violent protest (not the abolishment of slavery, obviously, but I mean after that).

      Comments like yours share the shit out of me. "oh, well, many thousands will have to die ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

      • daodedickinson 1596 days ago
        >unions doing non-violent strikes in the early 20th century

        My aunt's father (in the US) had the duty of keeping the stockpile of firearms hidden to quickly hand back out to all the union members if the Pinkertons tried to start killing people. In the mid 1900s.

        • monetus 1596 days ago
          Hurray for labor day
      • pimmen 1596 days ago
        But since the CCP will not respect their autonomy, they need to fight for it.

        Plenty of examples of European nations who had to fight violently for their autonomy in the recent two centuries.

        • JamesBarney 1596 days ago
          Were any of them against an adversary as large, heavily armed, and motivated as the CCP?
          • pimmen 1596 days ago
            Yes, one example would be the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks had no chance until they got help from the French, Russian and British empires though.

            I hope it doesn’t turn violent, and even if it doesn’t I think the West can offer good help to stave off the influence of communist dictatorship in Hong Kong.

      • JamesBarney 1596 days ago
        This is especially true of Hong Kong where the authoritian goverment is foreign, enormous, next door, and highly motivated to keep Hong Kong from leaving.

        Hong Kong would be a bloodbath, and even then I don't know if China would let them be free.

      • nemo44x 1596 days ago
        If people of color or those with non-mainstream sexual preferences wanted independence then they would likely have to wage armed conflict to get it. Asking for equal rights is something that can be done through the democratic system. Asking for liberation from an authoritarian government is quite a bit different in estimate.

        Workers rights like striking (while still very violent in many cases) is not an apples-to-apples comparison to liberating yourself from an authoritarian regime. The Balkans illustrate this well if you want recent European history.

    • tvanantwerp 1596 days ago
      This is a terrible and impractical idea. Nearly all insurgencies fail. And among the few that succeed, the new rulers are often as bad as or worse than the old. (Mainland China itself being a good example of that.) If the HK protesters start an insurgency, they will destroy the city and gain nothing in the process.
      • claudiawerner 1596 days ago
        >This is a terrible and impractical idea. Nearly all insurgencies fail. And among the few that succeed, the new rulers are often as bad as or worse than the old.

        This is an unfortunate perspective which seems to rule out any possibility of real qualitative change, and it's downright ridiculous to see when the people themselves are formally disenfranchised by the law to make semi-meaningful change, i.e the most change Western democracies allow. In other words, for the sake of freedom, "it's worth a shot" should be the perspective, not "let's not try". The fact is that we can learn from our mistakes. As it happens, despite your claims of nearly all insurgencies failing (failing in what respect? not succeeding? or succeeding but being worse?), the ones that have succeeded and live on to this day generally aren't that bad. The French, American and German revolutions, and with some qualification the Russian revolution were great.

        • iudqnolq 1596 days ago
          You can only learn from the mistake if you're alive at the end.

          Revolution doesn't only lead to improvement or no impact. It can also make everyone's life much worse.

      • tossAfterUsing 1596 days ago
        was CCP an insurgency from some authoritarians?
    • mac01021 1596 days ago
      It worked for Gandhi and his followers...
      • miles 1596 days ago
        And not so well for the Moriori[0]:

        Moriori embraced a pacifist culture that rigidly avoided warfare ... On 19 November 1835, the brig Lord Rodney, a hijacked European ship, arrived carrying 500 Māori (men, women and children) with guns, clubs and axes...

        A Moriori survivor recalled : "[The Māori] commenced to kill us like sheep.... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children indiscriminately." A Māori conqueror explained, "We took possession... in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped....." The invaders ritually killed some 10% of the population, a ritual that included staking out women and children on the beach and leaving them to die in great pain over several days.

        During the following enslavement the Māori invaders forbade the speaking of the Moriori language. They forced Moriori to desecrate their sacred sites by urinating and defecating on them. Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori or Māori, or to have children with each other.

        [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori#Invasion_by_Taranaki_M...

        • mac01021 1596 days ago
          I agree, peaceful protest against an oppressor who has just won your land by violent conquest and who slaughters your people without fear of reprimand by third parties seems unlikely to be effective.
          • aptidude187 1596 days ago
            Well they should just accept a two state 'solution' then. /s
      • nemo44x 1596 days ago
        Britain's destroyed economy after WW2 probably had more to it. A peaceful resistance can work against an enemy that is distracted with other matters, no longer interested in occupying, or demoralized. In the case of India, the UK managed to maintain business connections quite well in the region and colonialism was becoming outdated and expensive to broke Europe.
      • 8bitsrule 1596 days ago
        Agreed. Although he did have to count on the British having a sense of morality. I'm not sure that exists at the top-level in the PRC.
    • ewgoforth 1596 days ago
      India did.
      • nemo44x 1596 days ago
        If China were to get involved in a war the scale of WW2 like the UK did and then end up nearly bankrupt afterwards, then Ghandi's approach may work.
    • Simon_says 1596 days ago
      How on Earth would that work without guns?
      • nemo44x 1596 days ago
        They need to begin by finding sympathizers that will smuggle weapons into the country for them. As a resistance begins the enemy is sure to create an atrocity which will inspire many people to fight and make for foreign (and native who live abroad) sympathizers to fund and smuggle weapons into the area to equip the forces.
        • benologist 1596 days ago
          China's proven incapable of stopping, preventing or outlawing peaceful resistance so why would the populace invite them to a gun fight?
          • AnimalMuppet 1596 days ago
            One of these days, China is likely to bring the gun fight to the peaceful resistance. The question is, does the peaceful resistance want to be on the receiving end of a massacre, or do they want to have a gun fight? (Note well: It is unclear to me what the right answer is, either from the point of view of achieving political goals, or even from the point of view of minimizing the number of casualties.)
            • yorwba 1596 days ago
              In 1989, the PLA lost tanks to artillery fire in Bejing not because the populace had been stockpiling artillery, but because PLA units deserted when they learned that they were supposed to be fighting civilians. A one-sided gun fight is bound to turn into a two-sided gun fight as long as soldiers aren't 100% on board with the massacre. From that perspective, the development of separate national identities between Hong Kong and Mainland China is worrying, as it makes it easier for soldiers to emotionally distance themselves from what they're doing.
            • benologist 1596 days ago
              If China pursues atrocities against HK they will be financially strangled by the international community's sanctions, having the mainland population freefall back into poverty is an existential threat.

              Taiwan is more powerful than anything HK could ever muster and all their actual military might is barely an inconvenience in CCP planning. Hong Kong arming itself is probably a best-case scenario for China.

    • knolax 1596 days ago
      So you're promoting terrorism in a foreign country over ideology, how enlightened. Your comment reads like CCP-made black propaganda.
      • nemo44x 1596 days ago
        No, I don't think it would be in the insurgents best interest to terrorize their public. They would attack enemy military units and fight for strategic positions and assets they until they can install and defend the democracy they want.
        • knolax 1596 days ago
          I want to live in your fantasy world where militaries meet up at pre-arranged times in empty fields to take turns shooting at eachother.
          • nemo44x 1596 days ago
            The city of Hong Kong is not suitable for those type of tactics nor are those tactics useful for waging asymmetric warfare. Insurgencies fought with guerrilla tactics relay on harassment, defense positions, and movement. The city of Hong Kong is perfect for this.

            Artillery is useless in an urban environment for what I hope are obvious reasons. Tanks have little to no room to maneuver or support troops either. An insurgency would use narrow streets and buildings to their advantage. Both of which are difficult for a traditional military to leverage their strengths with.

            I agree in a dense urban environment it’s difficult to keep the civilian population safe. You need to win heart and mind. But tactically the city probably has many advantages for an insurgent military. Especially if a strong majority of civilians support the cause.

    • pacija 1596 days ago
      Kosovo is not an independent country. Increasing number of countries are reverting their decision of recognizing them as independent country, and as of few days ago majority of UN countries don't recognize their independence.

      Kosovo je Srbija.

      • yorwba 1596 days ago
        Recognition of UN members doesn't matter. What matters is whether the government that claims the territory can effectively implement their policies without getting blocked by the government that actually controls the territory. By that measure, Kosovo and Taiwan are much more independent than their UN status would indicate.
        • pacija 1596 days ago
          What also matters is the fact that my post you replied to has been flagged, thus rendered invisible, even though it only states verifiable fact, albeit not popular one. Keep on rockin' in the Free World :)