The Canadian government released a statement Saturday condemning Hong Kong authorities who issued worldwide arrest warrants for pro-democracy activists — including some Canadians.
Hong Kong police announced rewards on Friday for information leading to the arrest of 19 overseas-based activists for their roles in what they called a subversive organization abroad, accusing them of violating a national security law imposed by Beijing.
We should send an angry note!
Melbourne residents have been sent a letter in the style of a police appeal as Beijing hunts for Kevin Lam, a pro-democracy Hong Kong lawyer who fled to the city
Kevin Yam was wanted on suspicion of “a range of national security-related offences”, the anonymous letter read.
The letter in the style of a police appeal was sent to residents in the suburbs of Melbourne, seeking the whereabouts of a dissident Hong Kong lawyer living in their midst.
“A reward of one million Hong Kong dollars is being offered by Hong Kong Police to any member of the public who can provide information on this wanted person and the related crime,” it added.
Beverley McLachlin has spent the past six years servicing the reputation of Hong Kong’s top court, while destroying the one she spent a lifetime building in Canada.
Had she decided, upon her retirement from the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017, to invest in a nice condo in Boca Raton and take up watercolour portraits or something, her legacy would have been set as one of the most esteemed and accomplished jurists in generations. She was the first woman and longest-serving chief justice of the Supreme Court; she was a professor, an author, and at times, a polarizing figure, but her fidelity to law and order, to democracy and fairness was without question. But Ms. McLachlin has torched that very legacy by renting out her reputation to a sham court operating under the thumb of Beijing’s repressive and authoritarian regime.
Thousands of people from Hong Kong fled to Canada after China cracked down on dissent and free speech in the former British colony by imposing the national security law in 2020. Since then, many pro-democracy activists have been silenced, civil society groups have been shut down and outspoken media outlets have been closed.
However, a tough job market for new immigrants, housing challenges, competition from the UK and Taiwan, as well as a downturn in the Hong Kong economy could all be behind the sudden slowdown in asylum applications to Canada, according to expert opinion.
As Hong Kong puts the bishop on trial, Francis still offers no support.
It was a Saturday morning in July 1997, one week after Hong Kong was handed back to China. Cardinal Joseph Zen was waiting inside the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, all smiles. He was there to baptize his friend and the founder of Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai. I was there as Jimmy’s godfather.
We were a happy little band that day. But today, 25 years later, Jimmy has been imprisoned. And 90-year old Cardinal Zen, who was arrested in May by national-security police, is about to be put on trial.
h/t YG
A court in Hong Kong has convicted five speech therapists of producing “seditious publications” in the form of a series of illustrated children’s books that depicted sheep trying to defend their village from wolves.
The convictions are the latest using a colonial-era sedition offence that authorities have deployed alongside a new national security law to stamp out dissent.
Several high profile British Columbia politicians attended an event celebrating China’s takeover of Hong Kong alongside Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials last week.
According to Richmond News, the Hong Kong Economic Trade office held an event on Jun. 23 on the anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
… The arrest of a prominent Cardinal by the Chinese government raises some uncomfortable and delicate questions about the cozy relationship that Pope Francis’s Vatican has fostered with Beijing. In addition, one has to wonder if Zen’s own strained relationship with the pope—due in part to that close Rome/Beijing relationship—will result in a muted response from the Vatican about this outrageous act by the Chinese government.
The University of Hong Kong has ordered the removal of a statue commemorating protesters killed in China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The 8-metre-high (26ft) copper statue was the centrepiece of Hong Kong’s candlelit vigils on 4 June to commemorate those killed when Chinese troops backed by tanks opened fire on unarmed pro-democracy campaigners in Beijing.
The statue, called the Pillar of Shame, shows 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on one another, and has been on display at Hong Kong’s oldest university for more than two decades.
Hong Kong’s Security Bureau has warned Hongkongers not to take part in this year’s Tiananmen Massacre vigil on June 4, or commemorative long-distance run this Sunday.
“The relevant meetings and procession are unauthorised assemblies. No one should take part in it, or advertise or publicise it, or else he or she may violate the law,” a statement said on Saturday.
A former student union chief at Hong Kong’s Chinese University who was involved in setting up a now-defunct cross-party platform for political cooperation in the city has revealed he fled to Canada fearing arrest under the national security law.
Ernie Chow Shue-fung was among a number of local activists and politicians – including outspoken church leaders – who recently left the city in the wake of the Beijing-imposed security law.
Watch what you say: Hong Kong civil servants become wary of office snitches jostling to prove loyalty
Alice* was working in a public-facing civilian job in one of Hong Kong’s disciplined services when she was transferred last year to the back office of another government department after her bosses received anonymous complaints about her.
The abrupt move caught her by surprise. She said she had only shared a news article about a police raid following the introduction of the national security law last June, without adding any comments of her own.
The authoritarian assault on Hong Kong is almost complete. Its democratic institutions and press have been neutered. With democrats out of the picture, sycophants have come to the fore. One pro-Beijing lawmaker has reportedly shown his devotion by removing all the yellow crayons from her daughter’s colouring set – yellow being the pro-democracy protesters’ chosen colour.
I have no idea who this person is. I had to look her up and I probably shouldn’t be wasting my time on her but she is exemplary of the other Meghan Markles out there for whom victimhood, not character or ability, is some sort of currency. It only makes one sound utterly morally tone-deaf.
Unless this half-calorie starlet has forded a freezing cold river in the middle of the night in order not to starve to death in a veritable concentration camp state or defied a dictatorship, I really don’t care:
“From my experience of my short 19 years, only now entering the workforce, have I realized, damn, it’s harder to be a woman,” Ramakrishnan told Yahoo Canada. “I don’t regret it, I love being a woman, but damn is it hard.”
Last year Ramakrishnan became a Global Ambassador for Plan International Canada. More recently, she was on TIME magazine’s 2021 TIME100 Next list of the next 100 most influential people in the world, with co-creator of Never Have I Ever, Mindy Kaling, saying Ramakrishnan “has an activist’s heart and wants to use her platform to help others.”
She had barely rolled down her sleeve after receiving her Covid vaccination, when Carrie Lam started declaring her gratitude to the government in Beijing. Lam, Hong Kong’s friendless Chief Executive, does this kind of thing a lot. When talking about the virus, she stresses the benevolence of her masters, who claim to have suppressed Covid at home and are spreading their efforts far and wide to suppress it elsewhere. China is clearly hoping to extinguish the memory of where this pandemic came from in the first place.
When Canada unveiled new details of its open work permit scheme for Hongkongers this month, it framed the action as part of a defence of democratic values, against Beijing’s “controversial national security law”.
Canada stood “shoulder to shoulder with the people of Hong Kong”, and the new scheme showed Ottawa’s “solidarity with other like-minded allies”, said Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino.
But the programme, first announced in November, also represents one of the opening salvoes in a contest among Western countries to attract talented young people from Hong Kong, amid the city’s political upheaval.
Immigration experts on both sides of the Pacific said they were greatly surprised by the Canadian scheme’s scope, calling it “huge” and “remarkable”.
