Current Events > For people who aren't tracking it, Hong Kong is going through some real shit

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Tl;dr: China is pushing through new laws that will effectively let them police Hong Kong citizens, create a sweeping new category of arrestable offenses, and will more or less be the end of Hong Kong freedoms.

Remember that law that the pro China Hong Kong PM was trying to pass? The one that led to months of protesting and riots?

China has decided that they're just going to impose it on them directly, bypassing the legislative process entirely. Oh, and they also made it far more invasive. Their reasoning seems to be that if pro-democracy parties get another landslide victory in September that they would actually have enough of majority to block it from being passed, so they need to ram it through now while nobody can stop them.

And just to add insult to injury, pro-democracy legislators were physically locked out of the room when a vote was made to elect to the new chairman, leading to a unanimous vote in favor of a Chinese puppet. This was done because they were pushing back against a new bill that would criminalize making fun of the national anthem.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52771718

That article says Hong Kong "must improve" national security, before adding: "When needed, relevant national security organs of the Central People's Government will set up agencies in Hong Kong to fulfil relevant duties to safeguard national security in accordance with the law."

That means China could potentially have its own law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong, alongside the city's own.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52702076

The Legislative Council was in dispute over who should run the house committee, which scrutinises bills and decides when they are voted on.

Last week, the council president appointed Chan Kin-por, a pro-Beijing lawmaker, to oversee the election of a new leader.

On Monday - before the Legislative Council began - Mr Chan was in the chairman's seat, surrounded by more than 20 security guards.

As pro-democracy lawmakers entered the room, they tried to reach the seat, but were stopped by the guards

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Good thing activision blizzards apologized for not meeting their own high standards in a heated esports moment.

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weren't they supposed to let them stay democratic for like another 50 years? I thought that was the deal when they took HK back. that they would wait 50 years before enforcing full chinese law on them

Zikten posted...

weren't they supposed to let them stay democratic for like another 50 years? I thought that was the deal when they took HK back. that they would wait 50 years before enforcing full chinese law on them

You're telling me the Chinese leadership may have been dishonest in this?

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Coronavirus was just a distraction.

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Zikten posted...

weren't they supposed to let them stay democratic for like another 50 years? I thought that was the deal when they took HK back. that they would wait 50 years before enforcing full chinese law on them

China is trying to have it both ways by stacking the Hong Kong legislature. A number of years back they made a quiet change that Hong Kong citizens could only elect politicians for PM that were handpicked by China and since then they have attempted to push more and more strict laws through the Hong Kong legislature. The idea is that China can claim they're not taking over Hong Kong if "elected" Hong Kong politicians just happened to pass laws that match those that China has.

The problem is that Hong Kong still has a lot of Freedom of Information, so there have been massive populist push backs and pro-democracy parties won in an overwhelming landslide in the last election. China basically has until September to either lock everything down so that they can just arrest anybody who's speaking out against them, or risk going up against a super majority in Hong Kong Parliament that can actually stop their BS.

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Highwind07 posted...

I haven't really kept track of it since the last election that they had or the university raids.

That was late November. So you figure after that were the holidays and then by January everyone was talking about coronavirus. So it might feel like an eternity ago, but it was basically the last major world event before all this broke out.

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