I’m watching, but I don’t think anything substantial will change in regards to the Hong Konger’s ability to get an actual ARC.
Malaysian Chinese can still get ROC id I think
I would think quite a few can if not all.
Remember going to a lecture about overseas Chinese and Taiwan. Quite a few Malaysian men wait till after 36 so don’t need to do military service.
I think it’s fine . I want Taiwan to compete to be the center of the Chinese speaking world again, now that China is turning back the clock.
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A follow up to my earlier post as stories related to the topic of transnational repression finally hit the mainstream press in Canada. Here’s an example this week from the Globe and Mail.
‘Be careful you don’t die in an accident’: Hong Kong protester living in Canada receives daily threats
STEVEN CHASE
GLOBE AND MAIL
SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
PUBLISHED YESTERDAY
Summary
Alison Lai’s grandfather arrived as a refugee in Hong Kong seven decades ago, trading the chaos of 1950s China for the safety of what was then a British colony.
In 2020, China made a refugee of Ms. Lai, too.
The pro-democracy activist fled Hong Kong, the city of her birth, for Canada last year as Beijing tightened its grip over the territory it acquired from Britain in 1997. She was part of an exodus that has only expanded since China enacted a draconian national security law to silence critics in the city it had once promised would be allowed to retain Western-style civil liberties.
Ms. Lai, 32, is one of thousands of Hong Kongers looking to build a new life in Canada. Like her, some have been granted asylum as political refugees. Others are applying for immigration programs designed to attract well-educated foreigners.
In March, 2020, Ms. Lai’s life was turned upside down in a matter of hours after a friend warned that the Hong Kong police were looking for her. A veteran of the protests that rocked the city when citizens demanded accountability from the Beijing-backed government, she had been tear-gassed, beaten with batons and followed for days by police.
Her friends were being arrested, and it was time for her to leave. By the next day, she was on a flight out of Hong Kong.
She headed for Canada, claiming asylum upon arrival – just days before Canadian authorities closed the border as a pandemic measure.
It took a year for the government to officially recognize her under the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees: someone who cannot return to their home “due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion” or other factors.
She has begun building a life in Calgary. Educated as a journalist, she now works in retail. She and other Hong Kong activists have also founded a non-profit organization, the Soteria Humanitarian Institute, to help resettle Hong Kongers, Tibetans and Uyghurs fleeing persecution in China. In Greek mythology, Soteria is the goddess of safety and preservation from harm.
But as with many Hong Kong activists, a fresh start in Canada does not mean an end to harassment and attacks from the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies.
Each day, Ms. Lai is subjected to a torrent of abuse when she opens up Soteria’s social-media accounts.
She is the first Hong Kong refugee to allow The Globe and Mail to publish their name and city of residence, hoping to draw attention to what is happening to critics of China’s authoritarian government who now live in Canada.
As the spokesperson for the group, Ms. Lai is the main target of the anonymous harassers. She receives dozens of missives daily full of foul words and misogynistic attacks. She has been sent video clips of beheadings. “You are such a shame for a Hong Konger. … Be careful you don’t die in an accident,” one recent message said.
They have found out where she works and know her daily routine. They often threaten to pay her a visit.
Her tormentors even know when she has taken part in a protest outside the Chinese consulate in Calgary. This summer, while protesting the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Ms. Lai saw men with telephoto lenses taking pictures of the rally participants from the balconies of neighbouring buildings.
Soon after, the harassment referred to her participation in the demonstration. “Why don’t you go back to Hong Kong and protest the Winter Olympics there?” one said.
Ms. Lai’s friends have taken the matter to the RCMP and the Calgary police. Last year, Ottawa urged anyone being targeted in such a manner to speak to law enforcement.
Martin Seto, a Calgarian with the New Hong Kong Cultural Club, which also supports asylum seekers, said he spoke to the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, but they told him it’s difficult, if not impossible, to trace harassment online – particularly if it’s coming from another country.
The RCMP did not respond to a request for comment.
Cherie Wong, the executive director of Alliance Canada Hong Kong, an umbrella group for Hong Kong pro-democracy activists in Canada, said they and their supporters are particular targets for intimidation. “Harassments of dissidents in the diaspora never stops,” she said. “The Chinese Communist Party in Beijing has identified these folks as clearly disobeying the interests of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments.”
Ms. Lai said she refuses to give in to the harassers. “They sound like Chinese uncles,” she said, using a term for older men.
Nevertheless, the stress of starting over about 11,000 kilometres from home sometimes weighs heavily with her. She left behind a well-paying job – and parents who as recently as this spring received a visit from Hong Kong police officers looking for her.
On rare occasions, the enormity of what she has taken on is too much to bear.
“Last winter – it was the first winter in Calgary. I was so cold after I took a shower. And I couldn’t stop crying,” Ms. Lai recalled.
If she had not chosen this life, she could still be enjoying warm weather in Hong Kong, taking afternoon tea or shopping.
But she remains committed to her path and motivated by two goals: supporting other exiles from China and telling the story of what the Chinese Communist Party has done to her people. “When you find something wrong, it is a citizen’s responsibility to tell the government they are wrong.”
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I would like to share this with my Canadian MP. Do you have the URL?
The article above is paywalled for most forumosans.
If you want the URL, here it is:
Guy
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Thanks!
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Stunning stupidity—if also unsurprising given how rapidly things have unraveled in HK.
The film that’s been censored is called Piglet Piglet (美豬肉圓).
Guy
Disney+ censors Simpsons episode on Tianmen in Hong Kong.
Activists including jimmy lai are sentenced to 13-14 months jail for the lighting of candles on June 4 to remember the Tienanmen Massacre.
Chow hang-tung, barrister and vice-chairperson of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, is among 24 democrats charged over last year’s banned Tiananmen Massacre vigil. She, along with media tycoon Jimmy Lai and activist Gwyneth Ho were the only defendants who pleaded not guilty. (from theHong KongFree press)
Here is her mitigation statement to Judge Amanda Woodward.
“ Your Honour, you will not hear from me any moving life story and personal particulars, for this trial is not about me.
What has been put on trial here is perhaps the last candlelight vigil in Victoria Park for a long time to come, and definitely the last time that the Hong Kong Alliance could appear in Victoria Park on June 4th now that the Hong Kong Alliance was “killed” by the Government. It is a trial of this 31 years of tradition, this decades-long symbol of resistance that has been forcibly put to an end, first through the present prosecution, then continued through ever-escalating measures by the authorities.
Let us not delude ourselves that this is all about COVID-19 and that the criminalization of the vigil is only an exceptional measure at an exceptional time. What happened here is instead one step in the systemic erasure of history, both of the Tiananmen Massacre and Hong Kong’s own history of civic resistance.
The fact that this case relies heavily on publicly collected evidence that are no longer publicly available, either because the media publishing them had shut down, or the organisation hosting them had been banned, is saying something about the kind of repression and fear that has swept over Hong Kong in a mere one and a half year time. The shrinking, no, the collapse of the space for free expression, association and political action, is a prevalent experience that is every bit as common and as painful, if not more painful, than the COVID-19 situation in this city.
Yet while the Court sees fit to take judicial notice of the situation of a health crisis, it acts as if the parallel political crisis does not exist. It declines to hear any evidence of what “us” as an organisation, as a people, are experiencing in this pandemic of political repression. It refuses to see the wider context under which this case happened, in the name of focusing only on relevant and admissible evidence.
A collective act of some 20,000 people has been branded as “criminal,” yet their [experience] is irrelevant. History is irrelevant. Politics is irrelevant. Views of the purported decision makers matter but not of those commoners who were affected but excluded from the decision-making process. The reality of political repression never stands a chance in court since no evidence of the kind would ever be admissible.
In closing its eyes to the obvious the Court risks making itself irrelevant to the ailments of our times. In purporting to maintain political neutrality the Court is in effect affirming the unequal power wielded by the Government in instituting political charges against its opponents, emboldening the authorities to take over more restrictive action that squeeze out the rights of the citizens.
Throughout the trial the greatest injustice in this case remains hidden and unmentionable, for who are truly responsible for inciting hundreds of thousands of people to gather in Victoria Park on June 4th, years after years? They are the murderers who killed at will in Beijing 32 years ago, with tanks and dumdum guns. Yet the killers were never punished by any court of law, while those who demand truth and accountability were relentlessly criminalised. This has continued non-stop for 32 years in mainland China, and is now also happening in Hong Kong.
With power and law in their hands, the killers think that they can sit easily in their thrones by controlling the discourse of right and wrong, guilt and innocence. I for one, refuse to play along and submit to my so-called guilt. If this country still cares to maintain any resemblance of fairness, let’s put those murderers on trial instead of us. Let’s put those criminals behind bars instead of honouring them as our great leaders. Let the truth of Tiananmen Square be freely discussed and redress be given to the long suffering Tiananmen Mothers.
What stands condemned here is 31 years of effort in calling those criminals to account, in standing beside victims of the Massacre, in continuing their unfinished quest for democracy. In designating the vigil as criminal a proud tradition of Hong Kong stands condemned, signifying to the world that this city is no longer the haven for free speech it once was. One Country has completely overwhelmed Two Systems, leaving no trace of the kind of life we once took for granted, including the freedom to light a candle on June 4th.
What stands condemned here is also individual agency. The Court seems unable to grasp that each individual, being his or her own master, deciding his or her own action, should not be criminalised just because such act is echoed by many. It seems unable to appreciate that a leaderless movement where people are not just mindless followers in a crowd is possible. It is significant that this last vigil was also the first time where the vigil has no definite organiser, no centralised theme. The organising role of the Hong Kong Alliance faded into the background, with individuals taking up their own initiatives to give a much wider variety of meaning to candlelight on this day. Indeed the meaning of remembering Tiananmen has always been evolving, through the participation of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers throughout the years. Hong Kong Alliance provided one platform but was never the sole driver. Different groups and people devised their own action to mark the date, thus participated in a continuous dialogue over the meaning and importance of commemorating the Massacre.
Victoria Park was filled with slogans, songs and flags that are related not only to June 4th, but at the heart was the freedom struggle in Hong Kong. We are different and decentralised, yet we act in solidarity, united by our conviction that the government’s blatant attempt at erasing history and suppressing activism must be resisted. When history is not forgotten, it lights our path to the future. As on that beautiful night last year, when candlelight lit up all over Hong Kong and in Victoria Park, the spirits of 1989 and the movement in Hong Kong rhymed. Such a diversified vigil, where every individual took up the responsibility to act and all kind of views were expressed, is perhaps a fitting finale to this 31 years of tradition, showing the way how this decades long campaign for justice and democracy will continue despite the fact that the Alliance is no more.
With the present trial and conviction, the meaning of remembering Tiananmen undergoes another evolution. No longer is it some far-away suffering whose relevance wanes as each day passed. Nay, now it is a suppression shared across time, across distance, across identities. When the label of “criminals” is casually put onto all who dared to light a candle on that day, the struggle becomes as much as about history as about protecting our rights and future, here at home. If those in power had wished to kill the [movement] with prosecution and imprisonment, they shall be sorely disappointed. Indeed what they have done is breathing new life into the movement, rallying a new generation to this long struggle for truth, justice and democracy.
People moved by conscience cannot be deterred by jail. Rest assured that the candle light will live on, despite bans and ever more restrictive “laws”. I am but a humble member of these people of conscience, and this is the only basis I ask the court to sentence me on. For when mass action is condemned, individual leniency is but a farce.”
Recorded here for posterity sake.
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Meanwhile in Taipei City, the restaurant supporting HK youth (and was subsequently vandalized with feces thrown around the shop) has closed:
https://focustaiwan.tw/cross-strait/202112130022
Guy
Small overnight reno, CCP style.
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And the counter move:
Guy
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Not to be outdone, Chinese University of Hong Kong steps up to also try to de-commemorate June 4, 1989:
Guy
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Very sad to see all this. I wonder what bullshit “safety concerns” the university pulled out of theirs arses to “justify” painting over that mural.
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“Safety” here evidently means “avoid prosecution via the rule-by-law National Security Law” in HK.
As a human being, I am offended by this wholesale attempt to erase history and memory.
As a humanist (i.e. someone working in the humanities fields at the postsecondary level), I am reminded yet again why China will never have world-class universities or be capable of producing even adequate humanities research if these sledgehammer tactics continue to be used to silence and intimidate students and scholars.
Guy
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Another one bites the dust.
It will be a tragic day for all of us if China is ever able to control Taiwan.
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Peng was previously also chief of staff of the Armed Police Force in Xinjiang.
Someone with the right experience. /s
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