JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: HONG KONG PROTESTS TAKE NEW TURN IN VIOLENCE - THE GREAT IRONY OF HONG KONG'S TRULY SORDID BRITISH HISTORY - THE FIRST OPIUM WAR - CHINA'S RESPONSE YET REMAINS RESTRAINED COMPARED TO ANY OTHER SUCH CIVIL DISTURBANCE WE SEE - COMPARE MACRON'S BLOODY TOLL ON THE STREETS OF PARIS AGAINST THE "GILETS JAUNES"

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS


"Hong Kong protesters fire arrows from campus fortress

"Demonstrations stretch into 6th month with demands for independent inquiry into police brutality"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hong-kong-university-clashes-1.5362707


I do think they've signed their own death warrants. I mean that figuratively, of course, but once serious violence is underway, anything is possible. Chaos so easily sets in as in so many of America’s ugly conflicts abroad.

No country can permit young gangs to carry on this way, using bows-and-arrows against authorities from a homemade fortress. The one photo shows a professional hunting bow being used, a very lethal weapon, not some amateur or symbolic effort.

It has nothing to do with words about "democracy" or "freedom. No country permits this. It is violent anarchy.

Apart from everything else, the demonstrators are demanding what cannot be given, that China relinquish its title to a region. It is not possible, and for many reasons.

Just the symbolism is terrible. Hong Kong was a British colony, not a democracy, not a symbol of anything glorious. Indeed, it was a colony with a sordid history.

Its British history is intimately bound up with the First Opium War of the late 1830s and early 1840s against China. Britain flooded China with opium grown in its colony, Bengal, creating vast numbers of miserable addicts.

The Chinese Emperor even wrote Queen Victoria pleading for a halt to the terrible trade. He was ignored, and after a brief time as the emperor tried to throw out the merchants himself, British gunboats were sent, the very origin of our term 'gunboat diplomacy."

Such is the glorious heritage of British Hong Kong.

As for demands around an investigation of police brutality, all I can say, as an impartial observer and an advocate for human rights, is that China’s restraint has been remarkable, given the levels of violence in the city’s streets and subways and at its airport for months.

There are many comparisons to be made from contemporary events, but France’s President Macron, in the very heart of Paris, has killed about a dozen of the Gilets jaunes demonstrators, crippled scores for life, and wounded many hundreds more - all accompanied by massive violent arrests.


LATE NOTE:

The protesters, barricaded at the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, are reported to be using gasoline bombs on surrounding streets. They have set fire to a nearby bridge associated with the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, an important traffic artery they have been blockading from their campus location.