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Anonymous asked:
Thoughts on the Hong Kong protesters raising British colonial flags after their takeover of an assembly building or what not
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kropotkindersurprise answered:
I’ve seen a lot of footage from the Hong Kong protests from many different news sources, including a lot of video of their million-strong marches etc, and I’ve seen two UK flags and three american flags. While there are bound to be factions of idiots, right-wingers and fascists in almost any large-scale popular movement like this (see the clashes between antifascists and fascists within the french Gilets Jaunes movement for example), as far as I can tell there is not a very large presence of them here. At the same time, there also doesn’t seem to be a large far-left presence.
The five main demands are what most people seem to be supporting, and they mostly look quite reasonable to me:
- Full withdrawal of the extradition treaty bill ( people rightly expect that the bill would lead to people being extradited for criticising the Beijing government)
- The resignation of Chief executive Carrie Lam for allowing the bill to be introduced and for her reaction to the protests.
- The government must retract it’s characterisation of the protests as “riots” ( useless respectability politics but eh)
- An independent body must investigate and prosecute the police brutality during the protests
- everyone arrested because of the protests must be released.
Another demand for many of the people in the streets is free elections. Currently Beijing can recall elected officials, and the Chief executive is appointed by a weird council of business representatives and government officials, instead of by direct elections.
So yeah, it’s not a revolutionary or far-left movement, but it is a large-scale popular movement against political and police repression, from which valuable lessons can be learned.
A good article that goes in-depth on the tactics used and also goes a bit deeper into the politics, the right-wing factions within the movement and the use of colonial and foreign flags in the protests:
https://itsgoingdown.org/lasers-in-the-tear-gas/
“In the following timeline and interview, an anarchist collective in Hong Kong presents a complete overview of the months-long uprising, reviewing its achievements, identifying its limits, celebrating the inspiring moments of mutual aid and defiance, and critiquing the ways that it has yet to pass beyond a framework based in the appeal to authority and the outrage of the citizen”