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Yonden Lhatoo

So Hong Kong’s police unit recently set up to enforce the new national security law has issued arrest warrants for half a dozen activists who have fled the city. They’re accused of inciting secession and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.
The only one of note among this motley crew of self-styled dissidents, would-be freedom fighters and somewhat confused independence advocates, frankly speaking, is Nathan Law Kwun-chung, a bright young man with a once-promising future who was controversially stripped of the Legislative Council seat he won by popular vote back in 2017.

While some of his peers who were disqualified along with him had openly derided their sovereign government and contemptuously mangled their oath-taking, Law’s only crime to be kicked out of the legislature was to insert an upward inflection while reading out the words, “I swear allegiance to … the People’s Republic of China”, making it sound like he was asking a sarcastic question.
Oh, and he also quoted Indian independence hero Mahatma Gandhi in saying, “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

Anyway, that’s history, but he is now professing complete cluelessness as to why he is a target under the new law. “At the end of the day, maybe the answer is, I love Hong Kong too much,” he said.
Well then, this must be no ordinary love that has brought Hong Kong to such a sorry state of affairs.
All four students arrested by Hong Kong police under national security law released on bail
It must have been love, deep and resolute, that drove our opposition politicians to reject Beijing’s electoral reform package back in 2015. If they had accepted it, Hong Kong would already be electing, by universal suffrage, its chief executive – from a pool of candidates pre-screened by Beijing, sure, but still far better than nothing, which is what we have now. And we would be directly electing the entire legislature instead of still having to put up with half its seats being decided by special-interest groups.

It must have been love, love, love alone that tolerated, glossed over and encouraged the violence and vandalism that subverted what could have been a well-justified, popular mass movement for greater democracy last year but mutated into a campaign of hate and anti-national anarchy.
Don’t forget that it also laid the groundwork for Beijing to impose the sweeping national security law that is now causing so much angst and uncertainty.
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Had it not been for the external elements in last year’s social unrest, the involvement of some loving foreign governments in encouraging and enabling the people unleashing chaos, the romantic waving of British and US flags on the streets, the passionate invitations for Western powers to “punish” Beijing at the cost of destroying Hong Kong because “if we burn, you burn with us”, China’s leaders would not have found an excuse to bulldoze through with such a draconian new legal regime.


Law claims to have no idea what he’s done to face arrest. Testifying at a US congressional hearing right after the passage of a law explicitly forbidding Hongkongers’ participation in brainstorming sessions with unhinged Sinophobes to take down their sovereign nation, perhaps? Discussing Lord only knows what at a one-on-one meeting with a fanatic like US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is on a Bible-thumping, religious crusade directly sanctioned by God to destroy China, maybe?
National security law: one month after its adoption, how has Beijing’s sweeping new legislation changed Hong Kong?
Poor, love-struck Law. While the rest of us are here to face the music that he and his revolutionary comrades have orchestrated, maybe he should listen, tucked away somewhere in his safe space, to this old duet by Patty Smyth and Don Henley: “But there’s a danger in loving somebody too much/And it’s bad when you know it’s your heart you can’t trust/There’s a reason why people don’t stay where they are/Baby, sometimes love just ain’t enough.”
Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the Post



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Is this the price we pay for loving Hong Kong too much?

A woman holds a placard proclaiming her love for Hong Kong at an Occupy protest. Photo: AFP

Anti-government protesters with US and British flags gather at New Town Plaza mall in Sha Tin. 13OCT19 SCMP / Felix Wong

=== PHOTO CAPTURED ONLINE=== == IMAGE CAPTURED FROM FACEBOOK == Self-exiled student leader Nathan Law Kwun-chung met Pompeo at Winfield House, the British residence of the US ambassador at Regent’s Park.  Photo: FACEBOOK

Fire is set up at a HSBC Mong Kok branch, on Nathan Road, Mong Kok on Christmas Day. HSBC was embroiled in the controversy after police earlier froze a crowdfunded capital from a corporate account held by Spark Alliance HK, a non-profit organisation set up in 2016 to help anti-government protesters. 25DEC19. SCMP/ May Tse

News

Hong Kong

Politics

Opinion


Yonden Lhatoo offers a loving little reality check, amid all the political grandstanding and paranoia over the city’s national security law, to remind us how and why we got here



Yonden Lhatoo offers a loving little reality check, amid all the political grandstanding and paranoia over the city’s national security law, to remind us how and why we got here.


Hong Kong national security law (NSL)

Hong Kong protests

Hong Kong politics

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Is this the price we pay for loving Hong Kong too much?

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Yonden Lhatoo offers a loving little reality check, amid all the political grandstanding and paranoia over the city’s national security law, to remind us how and why we got here

Yonden Lhatoo offers a loving little reality check, amid all the political grandstanding and paranoia over the city’s national security law, to remind us how and why we got here