Hong Kong - Page 19

Pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong protested against the city’s Beijing-controlled government on Thursday over its inadequate response to the coronavirus.

Local police in Wuhan, China, revealed they had “handled” the cases of eight individuals accused of publishing statements not approved by the Communist Party on social media regarding the deadly respiratory disease that recently originated in that city, Radio Free Asia (RFA) revealed on Tuesday.

Hong Kong confirmed its first case of a mystery coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, on Wednesday after weeks of expanding its power to isolate potential patients and amid warning the virus could evolve to be deadlier.

The mayor of Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China where a new form of coronavirus spreading globally originated, told potential visitors to avoid the city Tuesday as health officials warned the virus could mutate the more rapidly it spreads.

Chinese officials and state media insisted on Monday that the emergence of a previously unknown respiratory virus affecting hundreds and believed to have killed three people so far presented “no need to panic” and that the virus was not spreading significantly within China.

Local media reported that 150,000 people in Hong Kong attended a protest Sunday demanding the world impose sanctions on the Communist Party of China that ended abruptly with police brutality and the arrest of its organizer despite the group receiving a legal permit for assembly.

An unchallenged China will herald in “a dystopian future in which no one is beyond the reach of Chinese censors, and an international human rights system so weakened that it no longer serves as a check on government repression,” Human Rights Watch warned in its annual report on the country published Wednesday.

Hong Kong Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma said on Monday that a special “task force” will consider “how best and how expeditiously” to handle the enormous number of criminal trials related to the ongoing protest movement.

Hong Kong’s Chinese-controlled authorities blocked the entry of the executive director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, on Sunday.

Taiwan’s presidential election entered its final day of campaigning with a mixture of angry allegations, calls for unity, and international tensions. Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) remains heavily favored to win, but Tsai herself advised supporters to “come together and never underestimate our rival,” meaning Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Han Kuo-yu.

In one of the odder twists of the Taiwanese presidential election, representatives of the pro-China Kuomintang party (KMT) accused incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of “sucking up to the Chinese Communist Party” while insisting it is unfair to describe the KMT as pro-China. 

The world’s largest debate tournament, known as the World Universities Debating Championship, which was held in Bangkok, Thailand, censored a debate on the topic of Hong Kong this week after a group of Chinese students protested the topic’s inclusion by leaving the venue.

China’s state propaganda outlets published photos and videos of what they called “real combat scenario” training of the People’s Liberation Army Wednesday, alongside articles warning that tensions between Iran and America could lead to a new world war.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced Tuesday she would expand the government’s power to isolate individuals from the general public if considered a health hazard in the wake of a viral pneumonia of unknown cause that reached the city from within China.

A suspected undercover police officer was pepper-sprayed at a pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong on Sunday by fellow officers who did not realize he was on their side. 

Communist China unexpectedly announced a new director of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong on Saturday, replacing two-year veteran Wang Zhimin with Luo Huining, a party apparatchik with no discernible experience in either foreign affairs or Hong Kong.

China has halted cross-border listings between the London and Shanghai stock exchanges amidst growing tension between the communist regime and the United Kingdom over Hong Kong.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen urged China to co-exist with a sovereign Taiwan and warned the world that “One Country, Two Systems” – the policy that applies to Hong Kong and Beijing has attempted to impose on Taiwan – is simply not viable in remarks Wednesday.

Protesters in Hong Kong sent a message on Wednesday that they did not intend for their pro-democracy movement to die down in 2020, starting the year attracting one million to an assembly that concluded with police violently cracking down, arresting hundreds, and pepper-spraying a lawmaker in the face.

2019 was the year that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) shed any pretence of honouring the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, just 22 years after control of the city was handed over from the United Kingdom to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

As the sun sets on another year, those who left their mark on 2019 prepare for a new decade – one that will likely face unprecedented political, economic, and moral challenges to the free world. With 2019 came a growing

A true Person of the Year award, not one dished out for political propaganda purposes, should acknowledge the tremendous influence of the Hong Kong protesters.

The end of the decade brought with it a tumultuous 2019 — a year defined by global protests, shock election results, surprise heroes, unthinkable tragedies, and new rays of hope.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping delivered a New Year’s Day address on Tuesday in which he celebrated “significant breakthroughs” in technological development, economic growth, military power, and improved quality of life for China’s poor.

Hundreds of Hong Kongers attended a rally on Monday night to honor those who were killed and injured during seven months of demonstrations.

China’s war on Christmas “spreads a rhetoric of hate and division,” jeopardizing religious liberty and indoctrinating children, writes Peter den Hartog in the South China Morning Post Saturday.

Pope Francis dreams of being the pontiff who will establish diplomatic relations with Beijing, and to achieve this goal he is willing to make “concessions,” asserts Vatican analyst Alban Mikozy.

Hong Kong’s anti-government protests continued on Christmas, with some reports of confrontations between police and demonstrators but not the general chaos government officials seemed to be expecting. 

Pope Francis called attention to a series of afflicted areas around the globe in his annual Christmas blessing Wednesday, conspicuously omitting any mention of Hong Kong’s mounting crisis.

A spokesman for Hong Kong’s police force said during an interview Monday that protesters should consider the epithet “cockroach” a term of endearment, as cockroaches are resilient and “full of vitality.”

Hong Kong police violently repressed a protest attracting an estimated thousand people Sunday against the use of concentration camps to eliminate the ethnic Uyghur minority of western China, beating protesters with batons and threatening to shoot them.

Han Kuo-yu, the mayor of Kaohsiung and Kuomingtang (Nationalist Party) candidate for president of Taiwan is facing a movement to recall him.

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, who spent the week lavishing praise and attention on Macau to send a message to a certain other island that used to be a foreign colonial possession, used a speech commemorating 20 years of Chinese control over Macau to warn that Beijing will not accept interference by “external forces” in the Hong Kong crisis.

The secretary-general of the Hong Kong democracy movement Demosisto, Joshua Wong, accused the Hong Kong police on Thursday of hacking into his mobile phone and illegally obtaining evidence against him in his upcoming trial.

An infuriated Global Times, the flagship English-language propaganda outlet of the government of China, claimed in a column Thursday that the House of Representatives voting to impeach President Donald Trump should cast doubt over all criticism of China’s human rights atrocities.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg accused President Donald Trump of being “silent” in the face of atrocities committed by the communist government of China during Thursday night’s Democrat presidential debate, hosted by PBS.