The violence over the freedom of Hong Kong citizens is no longer limited to Hong Kong. Students numbering in the hundreds gathered on the campus of the University of Queensland, staging a sit-in to protest Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill, that if passed, would permit Hong Kong to extradite criminals to mainland China, a country with significantly fewer freedoms for citizens, and serious human rights issues.
During the protest, pro-Beijing counter protesters arrived on the scene, and “They drove us to the lawn and surrounded us for half an hour,” says student Christy Leung. Shortly after, she says the counter protesters began attacking the pro-democracy students.
Huang Qi (黃琦) is a human rights activist and reporter from Chengdu, China who runs 64Tianwang, a website that popularly reports on the disappearances of Chinese citizens perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the nation’s ruling party. The site is blocked on the Chinese internet, accessible to residents of mainland China through use of a VPN.
The activist was placed in detention from 2000 to 2005, and again in 2009 for similar crimes. This latest sentence of 12 years is the longest any “cyber-dissident” has been sentenced to yet. “Huang Qi, founder and director of Sichuan-based human rights website “64 Tianwang”, was secretly tried at Mianyang City Intermediate People’s Court on 14 January 2019 after being held in detention for more than two years.” Amnesty International reported in January of 2019. “…Pu Wenqing, his 85-year-old mother, was taken away by Sichuan police in December 2018 and only released after more than a month in detention.”
Many are concerned over this latest sentence given Huang Qi’s poor health after years in detainment. The activist and Cyberfreedom Prize winner suffers from heart disease and kidney disease. “The authorities are using his case to scare other human rights defenders who do similar work exposing abuses, especially those using online platforms,” says Reporters Without Borders researcher Patrick Boon.
Two members of the Proud Boys allegedly made a threatening appearance at the home of a popular critic of theirs, Gwen Snyder, in Philadelphia. “My partner went down to get details. The neighbor said that a group had approached, and two Proud Boys had identified themselves, tried to find out if he knew me,” Gwen tweets, “and told him to relay the following message to me: ‘Tell that fat bitch she’d better stop.'”
Then, they slapped a sticker on our front door, a sticker he'd removed and saved.
We later discovered (via Twitter) that the morning after the visit, a different neighbor had found more stickers placed at the intersection where our apartment building is located. pic.twitter.com/nlIKc02hln
— Gwen Snyder is uncivil (@gwensnyderPHL) July 25, 2019
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Proud Boys as a hate group, with members and leadership who “regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.” The group purports to be a men’s club, and Republican lawmakers and public figures have repeatedly been seen publicly with members of the Proud Boys.
The far-right Proud Boys recently had a less-than-successful rally in Washington DC after the group experienced internal troubles, their main speakers mostly canceled their plans, and anti-fascist counter protesters arrived to drown out the Proud Boys’ speeches and chants.
“I write to urge you to open an organized crime investigation into Antifa” writes US Senator Ted Cruz, “an anarchist terrorist organization that routinely relies on violence to intimidate and punish its political opponents.” Cruz writes to Attorney General William Barr, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Today I penned a letter to Attorney General William Barr, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and FBI Director Christopher Wray calling for an investigation into Antifa under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). pic.twitter.com/ptY0syxPrn
Cruz is not alone; U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) join his call to officially criminalize the anti-fascist movement popularly known as “Antifa” under the RICO Act, a law famously used to catch mobsters and even corrupt Pennsylvania lawmakers. “While RICO was originally aimed at the Mafia, over the past 37 years, prosecutors have used it to attack many forms of organized crime: street gangs, gang cartels, corrupt police departments and even politicians.” reads Justia’s article on the law. Even the President has joined in the calls, lumping anti-fascist protesters in with violent gang MS-13, calling them “Radical Left Wack Jobs”
Consideration is being given to declaring ANTIFA, the gutless Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting (only non-fighters) people over the heads with baseball bats, a major Organization of Terror (along with MS-13 & others). Would make it easier for police to do their job!
Critics of the move cite not only the fact that criminalizing anti-fascism is suspiciously fascist, but that “Antifa” isn’t an actual organization. Wikipedia describes the movement as being “composed of left-wing, autonomous, militantanti-fascist[7] groups and individuals in the United States.” In addition, the counter-protesters often only appear to suppress right wing extremist groups, which committed the majority of domestic terror attacks in the USA in 2018.
At the event, the attacker rammed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer. He was recently sentenced to more than 400 years in prison. Footage of the rally was recently shown at the end of the major motion picture BlacKKKlansman, calling for an end to the alt-right and far-right extremism.
Attendees of WOMAD 2019, the UK’s World of Music, Art and Dance Festival, are reporting quite the shocking turn of events: the appearance of a two acre, 300 foot-in-diameter crop circle in a field near the festival grounds in Wiltshire, England.
The symbol, a pointed hourglass enclosed by a circle, is the infamous ‘extinction symbol’ popularized by the Extinction Rebellion, an activist organization with a flair for the dramatic. The group is well known for staging large-scale events that make it hard to keep them out of the headlines. This crop circle is the latest.
“The Extinction Symbol crop circle draws our attention to ecocide, the loss of 75% of insects and catastrophic loss of biodiversity; the overuse of herbicide and pesticide and the havoc climate chaos wreaks on our capacity to grow food. People are already going hungry around the world, even here in the UK, and yet the amount of perfectly good food thrown away every day by our supermarkets is astounding. In the Midwest of the USA, 16 million acres won’t grow wheat this year, due to flooding. This is the reality of our current systems and the Climate and Ecological Crisis we are in. The coming years will see truly cataclysmic changes to our capacity to grow food and that is when we are genuinely looking at societal collapse.”
This circle is the second massive circle to occur in the UK, but the last one was not made of flattened plants, it was made of people.
rebellion.earth
The creators of this human symbol are an art collective entitled The Circlemakers, who released the following statement about their demonstration:
“Much of our work is inspired by the ancient sacred sites of Britain and the world – we come together, we work as a team – as they did in the past. No one of us could create what we do entirely on our own. Extinction Rebellion is about making positive change by working together. The Extinction Symbol lends itself perfectly to land art. It is the peace sign of our times. The symbol which is free to use by all (in a non commercial way) signifies the threat of extinction. The circle represents planet Earth and the hourglass within is a warning to us, that time is running out. We are in a Climate and Ecological Emergency. In the making of this crop circle – the largest Extinction Symbol ever made – we were conscious of the huge risk to our fragile planet. The time to act is now.”
The Circlemakers
The Extinction Rebellion is quickly growing in numbers and popularity, with their concise demands listed on their website, and scrawled on massive banners at protests. Their demands are:
“Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.”
“Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.”
“Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.”
As the protests, which first began 31 March, 2019, rage on, harsher and more frequent violence against the protesters is being reported by those present. Most recently, protesters have posted testimony, photos, and videos of large crowds of masked people wearing white shirts, sometimes called Wumao, ambushing protesters and violently beating them, allegedly at the behest of the Hong Kong police and government. Protesters note that police officers were seen leaving the scene shortly before the attacks in the Yuen Long area of Hong Kong.
“If those who are pro-independence lead to the subversion of the fate of the country; with Hong Kong and the 1.3 billion people in the motherland having to pay a huge price, why shouldn’t these people be killed?”
– Junius Ho
Junius Ho
“The behavior of some radical protesters challenges the central government’s authority, touching on the bottom line principle of ‘one country, two systems,’” said Colonel Wu, in reference to the unique system of governance that separates Hong Kong from the direct control of mainland China. “That absolutely cannot be tolerated” He continued.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam declared the bill “dead” and all work on it a “total failure” on 9 July. However, the protests rage on as Lam has yet to officially withdraw the bill. Protesters worry that her words are meant as a distraction to quell the activists, so that the bill may be passed quietly without dissent.
Hong Kong is embroiled in a fight for its soul. The protesters are seeking liberty, and resisting the seemingly all-powerful pull of Mainland China, and the dystopian, authoritarian future it promises to the people of Hong Kong if this bill is passed.
WriteLeft 