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| Reporters silently protest police violence against them during the protests |
Journalists were particularly fed up with the police, as they have shot their colleagues with rubber bullets, fired pepper spray at them to clear the area while people are being arrested, pushed and shoved them so they can't get a good look at what is going on. Photographers have been arrested too and made to wear chains and handcuffs. Do we still want to bring up the fact that they don't have identification badges on? At most they will just have numbers indicating the detachment they are from, but no unique number for individual officers.
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| "Investigate police brutality, stop police lies" the sign says |
Last week freelance journalist Amy Ip had enough and tried to vent her frustration at police representatives at the regular press briefing but they walked away and suspended the press conference for half an hour. Some reporters, like Apple Daily, walked out in protest of the police.
The numbers are growing.
This afternoon just as today's regular briefing by the police was just underway, six reporters put on hard hats, each with a Chinese character. Together they read: "查警暴 止警謊", "Investigate police brutality, stop police lies". The police representatives felt the reporters were hijacking the event in the police headquarters, that they should use public space to demonstrate, and were asked to leave many times.
The reporters, from Stand News, RTHK, Ming Pao, AM730, Initium and Inmedia, stood their ground and the police representatives left the room and even turned off the lights, while other reporters said the silent protest was not obstructing anyone and that the briefing should continue.
Instead at 5.30pm the police held a Facebook Live press conference without any media attending. As a result there were no challenges to the police's statements nor could any questions be asked.
HKJA ex-co member
and @StandNewsHK
Ronson Chan revealed outside police HQs that one journo received a call
from newsroom senior, demanding him/her not to wear the helmet and join
the protest. Chan appealed to editorial seniors to understand dangers
faced by frontline journos. pic.twitter.com/2F2owNKInq
—
Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) November
4, 2019
Outside police headquarters, Hong Kong Journalists' Association ex-co member and Stand News journalist Ronson Chan said one of the reporters who wore the hard hat in the room earlier received a call from a newsroom editor, demanding he/she not wear the helmet. Chan appealed to senior editorial staff to understand the dangers faced by frontline journalists every minute they are on the streets.
It was later reported that this phone call never happened.... but still it was important to draw attention to how difficult it has been to report on these increasingly dangerous protests.
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| The "press conference" continued without the media there |
Speaking of which, a Hong Kong businessman has come up with a brilliant idea of giving millions of dollars to the person who has the best solution to end the five months-long protests.
Christopher Chuang is the CEO of a fin-tech company called TGM Group, and he's also a CPPCC member which should be a big hint. He said in a press conference that the top proposal would be awarded HK$1 million, while the best solution picked by a panel of judges will be given HK$7 million.
Chuang, who says he grew up in Hong Kong and loves the city, said the proposal should focus on livelihood issues, though he admits political conflicts are to blame for the current impasse, and that only Hong Kong residents can enter the contest.
Only 100 entries will be chosen, and the ideas cannot be political -- they won't even be considered, he says.
He claims to have gone to the protest sites and talked to many young people as well as the police.
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| Christopher Chuang will pay good money for a good solution |
Is he talking about a parallel universe? Last I checked, the police called everyone "cockroaches"...
Chuang means well, but the protests are a political problem. People want accountability, they want to protect whatever freedoms and rights they have left. And that means being able to directly vote for their own leader, not a committee of 1,200 people stacked with pro-Beijing elites.
But he is a pro-Beijing elite himself, so he is unaware of what's really at stake.
The government has tried to ease the housing issue, but that hasn't stopped the protests, neither has tycoon Li Ka-shing's donation of HK$1 billion (US$128 million) to help small- and medium-sized businesses helped calm down the protests either.
So obviously it's not about the money.
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| Escalated police tactics have resulted in lack of public trust |
Whatever happened to former chief executive Leung Chun-ying's website purporting to give people money for reporting people who committed "crimes" like throwing the Chinese flag into Victoria Harbour? Has he paid anyone out for a successful conviction?
And a footnote to yesterday's crazy bloody attack in Taikoo Shing, where a man bit off district councillor Andrew Chiu Ka-yin's ear?
After hours of surgery today, surgeons managed to re-attach the ear back.
As for the assailant, he was charged with assault occasioning bodily harm rather than grievous bodily harm... to put that into perspective, last month the student who used a box cutter to make a 3cm slash into a policeman's neck in Kwun Tong was charged with attempted murder, wounding with intent and grievous bodily harm.
So it turns out the knife-wielding man speaking Mandarin randomly attacked people in the mall, including a couple, not a family. The attacker has undergone a psychiatric test and found to have
"violent tendencies"...
Hong Kong is getting crazier and crazier, with each week becoming the new normal.
