[-empyre-] #FlexibleTactics - #HardStrategies

Thu Sep 5 01:53:43 AEST 2019

Carrie Lam's withdrawal is quite a farce and does not shift so much, 
really. Many students go to school today wearing masks, singing "Do you 
hear the people sing" over the playing of the national anthem... 
Tactics, are indeed happening, all sides...

 From the citizen's press conference today at 9:00 pm:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                        4 September 2019

    “Five Demands, Not One Less”

    This Press Conference was urgently called in light of Carrie Lam’s
    announcement that the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill may be
    proposed at the Legislation Council once its session resumes in
    October. Our spokesperson made the speech below.

    “Despite what Carrie Lam has said earlier today, we want the world
    to know that the Bill is still not withdrawn - do not be fooled
    again. Carrie Lam stated that the proposal for the Bill’s withdrawal
    will be raised in the legislature, also known as LegCo. However,
    LegCo will not be in session until October. Even more alarmingly,
    LegCo is not elected by the Hong Kong people and therefore consists
    mainly of pro-Beijing legislators. The proposal to withdraw the bill
    will almost certainly be blocked by these legislators. Hong Kongers
    can see right through Carrie Lam’s lies: she wants a way to shift
    her responsibilities, so that when the proposal is rejected by LegCo
    in October, she can say it is not her fault and then legitimately
    proceed with passing the bill. To our friends around the world,
    please do not think this Government has backed down, because it
    certainly has not. It is just seeking to create confusion,
    attempting to distract and escape accountability. Please don’t let
    them succeed.

    Even if the Bill were fully withdrawn, the documentary “Winter on
    Fire” has this to say on the Ukraine’s fight for freedom: “If we
    accept the government's conditions, our friends who have sacrificed
    their lives will not forgive us.'' The world will remember that we
    made our Five Demands deafeningly clear by storming into the
    Legislative Council - this was on the 1st of July. Today is the 4th
    of September. It has been more than two months before Carrie Lam
    finally crawls out of her arrogant silence to respond to one, and
    only one, of these demands: the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill.

    The Citizens’ Press Conference would first like to reiterate our
    insistence on the principle of “five demands, not one less”. If you
    had scraped your knee, applying a band aid onto your wound within
    the first few hours would have been a quick fix. But if you don’t do
    that, and even start smearing mud and rubbing dirty fingers onto the
    wound, what used to be a small, easily fixable wound would soon
    morph into first an infection, then rotting flesh, and eventually
    either amputation or death by sepsis.

    If Carrie Lam had withdrawn the Bill months ago that may have been a
    quick fix, but applying a band aid months afterwards onto rotting
    flesh will simply not cut it. What used to be just one demand - the
    withdrawal of the Bill - has now snowballed into five demands
    because of the evil this Government has shown towards its own
    people, and now, almost three months on, the Five Demands have grown
    into an intimately intertwined package. “We have one demand down but
    four to go”: we will never settle for less.

    The anti-extradition movement might have been triggered by the
    Extradition Bill, but it was only the last straw on top of a
    haystack that was already on the verge of burning. This very large
    haystack includes all the systemic failures and brazen lies this
    Government have always perpetrated: a demented and shoot-to-kill
    police force, a white terror regime, political censorship of
    corporates and the greedy jaws of the Chinese Communist Party are
    just debts which have been offloaded onto Hong Kongers within these
    three short months. Does the Government honestly think that the
    trauma, grievances and anguish they caused could be so easily
    dismissed with two syllables? Expecting the word “withdraw” to
    salvage all they have caused is childish and tone-deaf at best.
    The fact that the US Congress will resume within a few days, and
    will continue with the reading of the Hong Kong Human Rights and
    Democracy Act, has no doubt given the Hong Kong Government a fierce
    kick up the backside - it is certainly no coincidence that the
    Government has decided to make such announcement at this particular
    time. To this end, we are incredibly encouraged to see that the
    impressive camaraderie between local protestors and international
    efforts is indeed an effective way to express our voices. That being
    said, the Government has responded to just one of our five demands:
    we have also demanded the Government to set up an independent
    commission of inquiry, to release pro-democracy protesters who have
    been arrested, to withdraw the definition of our protests as
    “riots”, as well as the dual universal suffrage. Until the day all
    of these demands are met, Hong Kongers will not yield. In fact, with
    a bleak and oppressive political future ahead of us, Hong Kongers
    cannot afford to yield.

    According to a recent survey conducted by the Chinese University of
    Hong Kong, the respondents acknowledging the need of a fully
    independent investigation committee (not part of HKPF’s IPCC), at
    95.1%, is even higher than that of the demand of withdrawing the
    Extradition bill, at 85.9%.  This is because respondents are well
    aware that the IPCC possess no independence and authority over
    thorough investigations. We have seen the riot police beating all of
    the train passengers on the 31st of August at Prince Edward station
    indiscriminately, and Carrie Lam’s proposal of adding two members to
    the IPCC taskforce simply offers no help in light of
    ever-intensifying police brutality.  Mrs. Helen Yu used to be a
    senior consultant for Carrie Lam’s election campaign just two years
    ago, her previous role has got us worried if she could ever been
    neutral, notwithstanding Helen’s recent comments on the movement,
    that she deemed a fully independent investigation committee
    inappropriate in June. How could Hong Kong citizens fully trust the
    impartiality and neutrality of these two?

    What Carrie Lam has done so far, is too little, too late. Carrie Lam
    stated in the recording leaked by Reuters, that she estimated the
    number of violent protesters to be 2000. By the end of her speech
    today, she stressed that “Our foremost priority now is to end
    violence, to safeguard the rule of law and to restore order and
    safety in society. As such, the government has to strictly enforce
    the law against all violent and illegal acts”.

    We must ask Carrie Lam one urgent question, ‘when the movement
    quietens down, is that when we should expect mass arrests as an
    aftermath? ”

    We must also ask our fellow men and women, “with 1183 of us
    arrested, among them 67 charged with rioting, at least 5 suicides
    for the cause, we have already paid a heavy price. Will our deceased
    companions accept this kind of - quote unquote - withdrawal? ”

    At the beginning, we might not see the light of hope. Yet what we
    believe in is not to persevere in the clear sight of hope, but to
    persevere so as to see the light of hope. Hongkongers will not be
    satisfied with a partial victory, and our thirst for freedom and
    justice will not be quenched. “Five demands, not one less” isn’t
    merely a slogan we repeatedly yell out of our windows at 10 each and
    every night. This is THE joint consensus, belief and principles of
    action by which Hong Kongers abide and uphold.

    We look forward to the day when Hong Kongers are finally freed from
    fear. Then, at this very venue, we will take off our masks and meet
    each other for the very first time. One day.

    Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our time.

    Five demands, not one less.

    Fight on and take care, fellow Hong Kongers.”

☞

「创业容易守业难」
“To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art”

www.displaydistribute.com <http://www.displaydistribute.com>
On 4/9/2019 7:55 PM, Dominguez, Ricardo wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Hola tod at xs,
>
> So it seems that shifts in the atmospherics of  HK are happening with 
> Carrie Lam deleting the extradition bill. Meanwhile Xi calls on
> hard-state principles:
>
> “On matters of principle, not an inch will be yielded,” Mr. Xi said, 
> “but on matters of tactics there can be flexibility.”
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/world/asia/hong-kong-carrie-lam-protests.html
>
> What we know is that HKUmbrellas have shifted the spaces toward other 
> possibilities-an amazing human effort-and while the world is watching 
> multiple social waves and screenal witnessing the question that comes 
> next for all Umbrella's "not an inch" or flexible tactics? This seems 
> to be the burning question-in HK, on-line, on the border and in the 
> Amazon-very very hot days all around.
>
> Abrazos y gracias for the critical info,
> Ricardo
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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