It has been just over a year since that Sunday in June of 2019 that 2 million people took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest a proposed extradition bill...
The details of the new Hong Kong security law passed by China’s National People’s Congress became public at around 11 PM yesterday night. Although many were already fearing the worst, the details of the new law indicated even more stringent measures than previously anticipated. In the meantime, the Taiwanese government today officially unveiled a new office to assist Hongkongers in downtown Taipei today. It remains to be seen whether this office will be able to provide for Hongkongers in need of asylum in Taiwan...
National security legislation targeting Hong Kong was passed by China’s National People’s Congress this morning. It is believed that the new law, which criminalizes sedition, collusion with foreign forces, subversion of the government, and other charges, will have wide sweeping effects on Hong Kong’s political freedoms...
A demonstration in support of Hongkongers took place in Liberty Plaza today, with a number of civil society groups setting up booths starting from 3 PM, and speeches and performances taking place starting from 6 PM. The demonstration today commemorated the one-year anniversary of the start of the protests in Hong Kong and aimed to pressure the Tsai administration on the issue of providing aid to Hongkongers seeking asylum in Taiwan. Organizers claimed that 7,000 were in attendance...
It is widely expected that many Hongkongers will want to flee the city, given the possibility of being ‘disappeared’ into the prison system of a state that has imprisoned untold numbers of political prisoners, Uighurs, Tibetans, and others that don’t fit into Xi Jinping’s “China Dream.” Many have already fled. The Taiwanese government should take steps to aid them...
It is possible that protests yesterday in Hong Kong will be remembered as a pivotal event. Although yesterday’s demonstration is comparable to many of the protests that took place in the past year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the wake of the protests yesterday, American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified to Congress that Hong Kong was no longer autonomous from China...
With the second reading of a bill aimed at criminalizing mockery of the Chinese national anthem today in the Hong Kong Legislative Council, protests took place across Hong Kong. However, police violence against demonstrators began early in the afternoon...
Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen took to Facebook yesterday night to issue a statement regarding the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. While Tsai expressed support of Hongkongers, it proves hasty to assume that Tsai was proposing any concrete measure to aid Hongkongers out of a sense of solidarity. In fact, if it proves to be more than a vague statement that Tsai has no real intention of acting on, Tsai’s statement could be interpreted as aimed at putting further distance between Taiwan and Hong Kong more than anything else...
Protests involving clashes between demonstrators and police broke out today in Hong Kong, in the apparent resumption of what was a familiar pattern in the last year. The demonstration today was against plans by China’s National People’s Congress to pass security legislation circumventing the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Police did not wait for long to use tear gas, firing tear gas at demonstrators around 1:30 PM...