Today marks the 15th year of Chinese rule in Hong Kong. Every year since the Handover, protestors have amassed in Victoria Park to march on the streets heading towards Causeway Bay. Today, I attended the rally (we were safe, Jono! I'm still here in one piece!).
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| Spoke with a local on the way in; she asked whether I knew why they were protesting. |
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| I replied that I know about the handover and what current Chinese rule means for the people. |
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| Look closely and you'll be able to see Hello Kitty holding down a binding rope for Hu Jintao. Strangely, Hello Kitty seemed to be everywhere in the rally. It was their symbol of protest. |
Just spoke to a friend over facebook and she explained the significance of Hello Kitty. It boils down to this: the current CEO is in hot water over unapproved modifications to his home. He has a secret basement, and when people figured out that it was an illegal extension he simply claimed, 'Oh, it was here when I moved in.' To bolster the argument, he filled the room with Hello Kitty merchandise. Checkmate, general public! Irrefutable proof of his innocence ;)
http://badcanto.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/a-dramatic-reversal-of-fortune-cy-leungs-illegal-building-works-exposed/
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| There were two sorts of flags at the rally. One had a union jack with the coat of arms in a white circle (HK's old flag, I believe), and there was this beautiful flag, the lion and the dragon. Now that's a flag! |
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| While this rally was peaceful, earlier incidents around the time when Hu Jintao arrived in the country involved teargas and some scuffles. |
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| Some protestors also took issue with the recent death of a famous anti-government/anti-corruption campaigner in the mainland. EDIT: Li Wangyang is his name. He 'committed suicide' by hanging himself, but the last time I checked basic logic it's hard to asphyxiate when your feet can touch the ground... |
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| Many pro-democratic parties were present at the rally (together they form a congregation called the pan-democratic camp). I believe they were the Civic Party, Democratic Party (the largest), People Power and Civic Act-Up, and probably others that I was unable to identify. |
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| Revving up the crowd, this man shouted the name of the government and the people responded: 'Step Down!' Over and over, their calls for a new government rang through the streets. |
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| Party symbol for the Democratic Party. Those triangular banners you can see in the corner read: 1 person, 1 vote, addressing the issue I spoke of yesterday about how some people appear to be able to vote more than once (and for two separate sides of the house). |
The media barely covered the protest, sadly. In fact, on the train home, instead of any news on the protest, I saw a report in Chinese on the carbon tax in Australia! It's so odd to see Jules and Tone through the lens of Hong Kong reporting. Just checking: Australia still exists? The carbon tax hasn't wiped out the continent?
Anyway, we attended the rally for only a couple of hours, between 2:30 and 5pm. As I type this up (10:30pm), there are still many people out in the streets protesting. However, there was another major event in the city tonight: fiyawuuuurks
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| So cute! |
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| Cuz bebah ur a fiahwuuuuurk |
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| Yay, happy 15 years of a widening wealth gap! Yay, woooo.....Sorry I haven't produced better pictures of the fireworks. I was too mesmerised to shoot them properly. Oh, and they blocked the viewing platform from the public! So sad...that upper section literally had nobody on it except for media photographers :( |
Protests, fireworks, and a Chinese paratrooper display and the Premier insisting that the One Country, Two Government policy was 'absolutely essential'. Business as usual.
Tomorrow, there's a public holiday and I'm going to see Spiderman (hopefully in Cantonese!)
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