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Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

independent.co.uk

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Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#41

Post by wyuenho »

JDShu wrote: post #27
wyuenho wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other alternatives do you have to suggest to fight for a true democracy?

Two thing come to mind as a starting point: Negotiation and focusing on building Hong Kong's economy. Negotiation: The truth is, HK politics is very much like American politics. It consists of people blocking any progress on anything because the two sides are so deeply divided. Instead, I suggest making an honest effort to negotiate and take things step by step. For example, the central issue to the protests - the un…

Negotiation: We have been doing that for at least 30 years.

Economy: I in general agree but let's not forget most of China depends on the banks in Hong Kong for lending. There's a lot of capital at stake here.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#42

Post by gurkendoktor »

asdfologist wrote: post #14

Honest question: how effective are these sorts of protests in achieving their intended goals? Maybe I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but it seems all the major demonstrations in the last few decades (Tiananmen Square, Iraq War, Occupy Wall Street, post-Iranian election, etc) have sizzled out and failed. The one exception I can think of is the anti-Proposition 8 protests, but Prop 8 was defeated in the courts thr…

Okay, so this is not their intended goal, but this protest has probably been pretty effective in waking up Taiwan. It would be even more effective if the Taiwanese media wouldn't self-censor itself so brutally to avoid "trouble". (Look at the goddamn China Times, where the protests are the second-to-last dot in the slideshow!! http://www.chinatimes.com/)

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#43

Post by cluthe »

Shad0w59 wrote: post #22

The amount of hyperbole in this thread (and in the protest) is unbelievable. Protesters are quick to talk this up as the next Tiananmen Square when in fact looking at the ground it's nothing like it. You just need to look at Hong Kong culture to see that this is being overblown. It's the HK style, there's no middle ground, it's either the end of the world or nothing worth mentioning. Of course the people have a right…

That's not HK style, that's the corporate media's style, and you see it everywhere. The protesters have actually shown a lot of class - it's the police and government who need to show some class and have a more measured response to peaceful protests.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#44

Post by saeranv »

samdk wrote: post #24
asdfologist wrote: post #14

Honest question: how effective are these sorts of protests in achieving their intended goals? Maybe I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but it seems all the major demonstrations in the last few decades (Tiananmen Square, Iraq War, Occupy Wall Street, post-Iranian election, etc) have sizzled out and failed. The one exception I can think of is the anti-Proposition 8 protests, but Prop 8 was defeated in the courts thr…

You're missing some big ones, I think. In the last few years protest movements have effected regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Ukraine. Those transitions have been at all smooth, but it's hard to claim the protests in each of those cases weren't hugely influential. The protests in Ferguson, MO are still playing out so it's hard to say what exactly the effects will be, but I suspect not nothing. In Hong Kong prote…

The Ferguson protests are a good example. It's already resulted in some sweeping changes to their municipal court system[1], which has been described as, "One Big Shakedown Racket Targeted at Black People"[2]. These are changes the activists and lawyers had long sought, but was refused by the City Council until these protests made that untenable.

It is continuing to force the local police to a higher standards of accountability and transparency then they would have done without[3]. Additionally, this along with the recent national attention to other unarmed black men being shot by cops, has played a huge role in getting police officers equipped with dashboard and body-mounted cameras[4].

eta: grammar

[1] http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/policymakers-eye-big-cha...

[2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/09/04/st_louis_f...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown#Poli...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/us/todays-police-put-on-a-...

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#45

Post by spacehunt »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #39
ant_sz wrote: post #33

I'm from Chinese mainland, a student at Shanghai.there is not even a piece of information about this leaked to the mainstream media. many of my classmates managed to get information from multiple sources but more have no idea what happened. it's quite strange that the blocking turns a political event into a technical one. I'm not a 100% supporter for the protest, but I extremely dislike the government's passion of bl…

I have seen this in my Twitter stream today, and I can't really believe it - does the PRC state media really try to re-brand the photos as a "celebration"?? https://twitter.com/libdave/status/516281577001590785 Then again, I think that's pretty much what they did with pictures from the Taipei student protests earlier this year... (Edit: Whoops, duplicate of a sibling post :) )

Source: http://www.chinanews.com/shipin/cnstv/2014/09-26/news500277....

They actually got some "celebrators" standing in front of the protesters claiming everybody is having a party.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#46

Post by Shad0w59 »

wyuenho wrote: post #35
lotsofmangos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those delusional freedom lovers with their low-class demands for better representation. Next thing you know, they might start looting tea and throwing it in the harbour.

https://twitter.com/HemanChong/status/516383686355202048?utm...

Now you jinxed it.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#47

Post by saeranv »

saeranv wrote: post #44
samdk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing some big ones, I think. In the last few years protest movements have effected regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Ukraine. Those transitions have been at all smooth, but it's hard to claim the protests in each of those cases weren't hugely influential. The protests in Ferguson, MO are still playing out so it's hard to say what exactly the effects will be, but I suspect not nothing. In Hong Kong prote…

The Ferguson protests are a good example. It's already resulted in some sweeping changes to their municipal court system[1], which has been described as, "One Big Shakedown Racket Targeted at Black People"[2]. These are changes the activists and lawyers had long sought, but was refused by the City Council until these protests made that untenable. It is continuing to force the local police to a higher standards of acc…

Oh, also apparently the iconic 'hands-up, don't shoot' gesture from the Ferguson protests has migrated to Hong Kong: http://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6860493/hong-kong-protests-mike....

That's pretty cool.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#48

Post by spacehunt »

JDShu wrote: post #17
asdfologist wrote: post #14

Honest question: how effective are these sorts of protests in achieving their intended goals? Maybe I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but it seems all the major demonstrations in the last few decades (Tiananmen Square, Iraq War, Occupy Wall Street, post-Iranian election, etc) have sizzled out and failed. The one exception I can think of is the anti-Proposition 8 protests, but Prop 8 was defeated in the courts thr…

In my opinion, that's a very good question and one that demonstrators rarely think about. Frankly, and until somebody convinces me otherwise, I think that Occupy Central was and is a strategic failure if the end goal is gain a better form of democracy in Hong Kong. China has shown time and again that it will not back down when things get physical, and in for example, the case of Tiananmen square, the government got m…

I'll just note here that the current protests were not started by the pan-dems at all, rather it was led by high school and university students.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#49

Post by verroq »

ivanw237 wrote: post #11
refurb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the outcome of this will be super interesting. HK is now a part of China and I'm sure that the CCP is concerned that these protests will spread to the mainland. My guess is that they will handle this in a very non-public way (no surprise there!) working through the HK authorities. It will be brutal, but the CCP knows what a heavy hand will get them (Tiananmen Square).

Unfortunately it's very unlikely this will spread to the mainland. Much different from 1989, 100% of mainstream media in the mainland is heavily censored. They have been brainwashing the last two generations for tens of years. If you go weibo (Chinese version of Twitter) you will see the majority of mainland Chinese think the unarmed students were extremely violent and the police should shoot them. The CCP has been d…

I won't be surprised, self-censorship is rampant in the mainland community.

Re: Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

#50

Post by yeukhon »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #19

This is going to be Tianmen all over again: kill the chicken to scare the monkey. I remember seeing a photo of military vehicles coming into HK a couple weeks ago. If West did little with Russia you can bet they'd do even less with HK.

> I remember seeing a photo of military vehicles coming into HK a couple weeks ago.

FYI, there is a Chinese military base in HK since 1997. So seeing that is not even news. It's a norm.

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