Landschlacht, Switzerland, Monday 18 January 2021

In the Excited States of America, the Monday of / after an activist’s birthday is the day that his life and his ideals are celebrated.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day (officially Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and sometimes referred to as MLK Day) is a federal holiday in the US marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. 

It is observed on the third Monday of January each year.

King’s birthday is 15 January.

The earliest Monday for this holiday is January 15 and the latest is January 21.

King was the chief spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which protested racial discrimination in federal and state law.

The campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in 1968.

Above: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968)

President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983.

Above: Ronald Reagan (1

It was first observed three years later.

At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays.

It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

Dr. King believed:

Oppressed people deal with their oppression in three characteristic ways:

One way is acquiescence:

The oppressed resign themselves to their doom.

They tacitly adjust themselves to oppression, and thereby become conditioned to it.

In every movement toward freedom some of the oppressed prefer to remain oppressed.

Almost 2,800 years ago Moses (1391 – 1271 BC) set out to lead the children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land.

He soon discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers.

They become accustomed to being slaves.

They would rather bear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee to others that they know not of.

Above: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

They prefer the “fleshpots of Egypt” to the ordeals of emancipation.

There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion.

Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.

A few years ago in the slum areas of Atlanta, a Negro guitarist used to sing almost daily:

“Been down so long that down don’t bother me.”

This is the type of negative freedom and resignation that often engulfs the life of the oppressed.

But this is not the way out.

To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system.

Thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber.

Religion reminds every man that he is his brother’s keeper.

To accept injustice passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.

It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep.

At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother’s keeper.

So acquiescence — while often the easier way — is not the moral way.

It is the way of the coward.

A man cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing.

He merely increases the oppressor’s arrogance and contempt.

Acquiescence is interpreted as proof of the his inferiority.

A man cannot win respect if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety.

Above: Dr. King

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

Violence often brings about momentary results.

Nations have frequently won their independence in battle.

But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

It solves no social problem.

It merely creates new and more complicated ones.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral.

It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding.

It seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.

It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.

Violence ends by defeating itself.

It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Above: Dr. King

A voice echoes through time saying to every potential Peter, “Put up your sword.”

History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow this command.

If victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

Violence is not the way.

The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way of non-violent resistance.

Like the synthesis in Hegelian philosophy, the principle of non-violent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites — the acquiescence and violence — while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

The non-violent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent.

But he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted.

He avoids the non-resistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter.

With non-violent resistance, no individual or group need submit to any wrong, no need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong.

 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Above: Portrait of Dr. King

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps:

• collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist
• negotiation
• self purification
• direct action

Above: Dr. King

As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.

We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.

Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification.

We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves:

“Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?”

“Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?“

Above: Dr. King

You may well ask:

“Why direct action?

Why sit ins, marches and so forth?

Isn’t negotiation a better path?”

You are quite right in calling for negotiation.

Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking.

But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.”

I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation.

Too long has our beloved land been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture, but groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor.

It must be demanded by the oppressed.

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.

For years now I have heard the word “Wait!”

It rings in the ear with piercing familiarity.

This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”

We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

One may well ask:

“How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?”

The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.

I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws.

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.

Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

I would agree with St. Augustine (354 – 439) that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Above: Augustine of Hippo

Now, what is the difference between the two?

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?

A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.

An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274):

An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

Any law that uplifts human personality is just.

Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Above: Thomas Aquinas

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws.

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.

This is difference made legal.

By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.

This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation.

A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law.

That would lead to anarchy.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience.

It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake.

It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.

To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

In America, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal“.

Everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”

It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.

Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.

If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

A substantive and positive peace is one in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.

We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence.

But is this a logical assertion?

Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?

Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock?

Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion?

We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

Above: US Supreme Court Building

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.

It comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.

The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.

Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist.”

Zeitgeist: the spirit of the times.

In the aftermath of the 2021 US Capitol storming, criminal investigations, public health concerns, and various political repercussions have occurred, most notably the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

The riot triggered a nationwide manhunt for the perpetrators by federal law enforcement, with arrests and indictments following within days.

The incident led to the resignation of leading figures within the Capitol Police (USCP) and the Trump administration. 

Cabinet officials were pressured by the media and various public figures to invoke the 25th Amendment for removing Trump from office.

Individuals identified as rioters at the Capitol have been subjected to criminal investigations, arrests, and placement on the FBI’s No Fly List.

Per his involvement in inciting the storming of the Capitol, Trump was suspended from various social media sites, including Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

In response to various posts by Trump supporters on the microblogging site Parler in favor of the riot, insurrection, and attempts to overturn the 2020 US presidential election, its cloud computing services hosted by Amazon Web Services were terminated by Amazon on 10 January.

Public health officials have highlighted the danger of this event in exacerbating the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.

Security measures were also dramatically increased for the inauguration of Joe Biden as President.

This includes the deployment of the National Guard, with a security perimeter erected around Capitol Hill.

The storming of the United States Capitol was a riot and violent attack against the 117th US Congress on 6 January 2021, carried out by a mob of supporters of US President Donald Trump in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

After attending a political rally hosted by the president, thousands of his supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, with many breaching police perimeters and storming the building in an effort to disrupt the Electoral College vote count formalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.

The mob subsequently occupied, vandalized and looted parts of the building for several hours, leading to the evacuation and lockdown of the Capitol, as well as five deaths.

On 7 January, Michael R. Sherwin, the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia, said rioters could be charged with seditious conspiracy or insurrection.

He said any Capitol Police officer found to have assisted the rioters would be charged.

He further suggested that Trump could be investigated for comments he made to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol and that others who “assisted or facilitated or played some ancillary role” in the events could also be investigated.

Also on 7 January, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said that any rioter who entered the Capitol should be added to the federal No Fly List.

Former FBI director Andrew McCabe and David C. Williams argued Trump could face criminal charges for inciting the riot.

DC Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is specifically looking at whether to charge Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Mo Brooks with inciting the violent attack on the Capitol, and indicated that he might consider charging Donald Trump when he has left office.

Calls for Trump to be prosecuted for inciting the crowd to storm the Capitol also were made in the aftermath of the event.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said:

“We saw an unprecedented attack on our American democracy incited by the United States president. He must be held accountable.

His constant and divisive rhetoric led to the abhorrent actions we saw today.”

Legal experts have stated that charging Trump with incitement would be difficult under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court ruling which established that for speech to be considered criminally inciting, it must have been intended to incite “imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action“.

The day after the storming of the Capitol, the FBI and DC’s Metropolitan Police Department asked the public for help identifying the rioters.

Within days, members of the public sent the FBI more than 70,000 photo and video tips.

One individual was harassed after being incorrectly identified as a participant in the riots by members of the public.

His personal information had been doxed, and he reported receiving harassing phone calls and posts on social media.

In a press conference on 12 January, Steven D’Antuono from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the agency’s expectation to arrest hundreds more in the coming months, as it sorts through the vast amount of evidence submitted by the public.

The charge brought against most rioters would likely include accusations of sedition and conspiracy.

On 8 January, the Justice Department announced charges against 13 people in connection with the Capitol riot in federal district court.

Many more have been charged in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

The FBI and the Department of Justice were working to track down over 150 people for prosecution by 11 January, with the number expected to rise.

Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen instructed federal prosecutors to send all cases back to DC for prosecution, in a move that prosecutors across the county found “confounding”.

As of 13 January, over 50 public sector employees and elected officials and over a dozen Capitol police officers were facing internal investigations to determine their possible complicity in the riot.

Notable arrests and charges:

• A 70-year-old resident of Falkville, Alabama, allegedly parked a pickup truck two blocks from the Capitol containing 11 homemade incendiary devices (described as “Mason jars filled with homemade napalm” intended to “stick to the target and continue to burn” in court filings), an M4 assault rifle, a shotgun, two pistols, a crossbow, a stun gun, and camo smoke canisters, was arrested and charged under a 17-count indictment.  

Court documents said that upon being stopped by police, the man “asked officers whether they had located the bombs“, and prosecutors also “suggested an intent to provide weapons to others“.

Authorities also found handwritten notes listing “purported contact information” for Ted Cruz (R), Fox News host Sean Hannity, and radio host Mark Levin, as well as a list of “bad guys” including Seventh Circuit Judge David Hamilton and Representative André Carson (D–IN), who was referred to as “one of two Muslims in the House“. (6 January)

• The leader of a Proud Boys group in Hawaii was taken into custody. (7 January)

• A man from Colorado was arrested, with prosecutors stating that he allegedly brought a compact Tavor X95 assault rifle, two handguns, a “vial of injectable testosterone“, and about 320 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition.

He allegedly texted acquaintances that he was “gonna run that c–t Pelosi over while she chews on her gums” or “put a bullet in her noggin on live TV“, that he “may wander over to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office and put a 5.56 in her skull“, and that he “predicts that within 12 days, many in our country will die“, as well as later texting a photo of himself in blackface. He had previously protested outside of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s home. (7 January)

• A 60-year-old man from Gravette, Arkansas, who was photographed with his feet on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the storming of the Capitol, was arrested on federal charges of entering and remaining on restricted grounds, violent entry, and theft of public property. 

He will be extradited to DC to face trial. (8 January)

• A 36-year-old man from Parrish, Florida, was photographed carrying a lectern from Nancy Pelosi’s office, was arrested and charged with entering a restricted building, stealing government property, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

The Miami Herald reported he had posted on social media comments that “disparaged the Black Lives Matter movement” and police “who defend First Amendment protected rights“. (8 January)

• A 34-year-old man from Boise, Idaho, photographed hanging from the Senate balcony during the rampage, was listed as a person of interest by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.

He deleted his social media accounts following the riots, and issued an apology. (8 January)

• Jake Angeli, also known as the “QAnon Shaman” and pictured in many widely shared photos shirtless, wearing facepaint and a horned fur headdress, and carrying a spear, was arrested and charged with one count of entering a restricted building and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct.

Angeli’s lawyer claimed that Angeli believed himself to have acted “at the invitation of our president” since Trump had stated at the rally that he would accompany protesters to the Capitol (though he ultimately did not), and that Trump therefore ought to pardon Angeli directly.  

In a 14 January court filing, federal prosecutors sought to keep Angeli in detention, alleging that his participation in the riot was part of a failed plot “to capture and assassinate elected officials.”

While rioting inside the Capitol, Angeli wore a headdress and face paint and held a six-foot spear, and he spoke on a bullhorn. (9 January)

• A man seen in video aggressively leading a mob up the stairs to the second floor of the Capitol was arrested by the FBI. (9 January)

• A 53-year-old retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel was charged with one count of entering a restricted building and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct. (10 January).

• A second man (30) told the Sunday Times the Capitol storming “was a kind of flexing of muscles” and that “the point of getting inside the building is to show them that we can, and we will.” (10 January)

• A man who was arrested on 6 January and charged with “entering the United States Capitol Grounds against the will of the United States Capitol Police” committed suicide at his home in Alpharetta, Georgia. (10 January)

• A 56-year-old man was arrested in Newport News, Virginia, and charged with unlawful entry and disrupting government business. 

He had been photographed in a sweatshirt with the anit-Semitic words “Camp Auschwitz“, a “death’s head” insignia, and the slogan “work sets you free“, a phrase notoriously placed at the entrances of a number of Nazi concentration camps. 

He has been described as a long-time extremist who wore the sweatshirt regularly.  

Footage of him caused worldwide outrage, as the shirt he was wearing was the most overt sign of antisemitism seen inside the Capitol during the riot.

The International Auschwitz Committee, and survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp around the world, welcomed the arrest.

Christoph Heubner, the committee’s executive director, said that in recent days the man had become the symbol of a political subculture “that glorifies Auschwitz ever more openly and aggressively and propagates the repetition of Auschwitz.” (13 January)

• Klete Keller, a former Olympic gold medalist swimmer, turned himself in to officials.

He was charged with obstructing law enforcement engaged in official duties incident to civil disorder, knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds.

He was identified by his height, 6 ft 6 in (198 cm), and by wearing an official US Olympic team jacket without obscuring his face. (14 January)

• A 43-year-old man from Rochester, New York was arrested on 15 January 15, and charged with illegally entering a restricted building, obstruction of an official proceeding and destruction of government property.

A widely circulated video appears to show him using a riot shield to break one of the windows in the Capitol.

After the event, he allegedly stated he “would have killed anyone they got their hands on, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Michael Pence“.  

He has previously been seen at Proud Boys protests and is an ex-marine. (15 January)

• A 42-year-old man from Coxs Creek, Kentucky, accused of breaking the window that Ashli Babbit tried climbing through before being shot, was arrested in Louisville on 16 January.

He was charged by the FBI with assaulting a federal officer, destroying government property worth over $1,000, unlawfully entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct.  

Per the affidavit, he is seen in a video wearing a gray sock cap and a jacket with a red hood, striking at the window with a wooden flagpole.  

A relative identified him to the FBI, stating that he had gone to a Trump rally in Washington DC in the past too and learnt of his plans for travel through Facebook.

The affidavit also states the man admitted to a friend on January 7 that he had broken a window. (16 January)

• Jon Schaffer, co-founder and guitarist of the heavy metal band Iced Earth, surrendered to the FBI in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Schaffer is facing six charges related to the Capital storming and is accused being engaged in acts of physical violence in the building and of being part of a group of individuals that sprayed bear repellent on Capitol Police officers. 

In the days following 6 January, Schaffer was identified by music websites as possibly having been inside the building. 

The other members of Iced Earth issued a statement on 10 January denouncing the storming of the Capitol. (17 January)

• A 22-year-old woman from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was accused of stealing a laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s office, with the intent of selling its contents to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, the country’s main spy agency.

According to her former partner, the deal did not happen for unnamed reasons, and she may still have the laptop.

She has been charged with illegally entering the US Capitol and disorderly conduct, but not theft. The FBI is investigating the claims.

Pelosi’s chief of staff, Drew Hammill, tweeted that “a laptop that was only used for presentations” was taken from a conference room during the Capitol siege. 

The woman fled her home, telling her mother “she would be gone for a couple of weeks“, changed her telephone number, and removed all of her social media accounts. 

On 18 January, she surrendered to authorities in Pennsylvania, facing two misdemeanor charges. (18 January)

Historically, this day in history is a day beset with violence.

• The Nika riots took place against Emperor Justinian I (482 – 565) in Constantinople over the course of a week in 532.

They were the most violent riots in the city’s history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.

The ancient Roman and Byzantine empires had well-developed associations, known as demes, which supported the different factions (or teams) under which competitors in certain sporting events took part.

This was particularly true of chariot racing.

There were initially four major factional teams of chariot racing, differentiated by the colour of the uniform in which they competed.

The colours were also worn by their supporters.

These were the Blues (Veneti), the Greens (Prasini), the Reds (Russati), and the Whites (Albati), although by the Byzantine era the only teams with any influence were the Blues and Greens.

Emperor Justinian I was a supporter of the Blues.

Above: Mosaic of Justinian I

The team associations had become a focus for various social and political issues for which the general Byzantine population lacked other forms of outlet.

They combined aspects of street gangs and political parties, taking positions on current issues, notably theological problems or claimants to the throne.

They frequently tried to affect the policy of the emperors by shouting political demands between races.

The imperial forces and guards in the city could not keep order without the cooperation of the circus factions which were in turn backed by the aristocratic families of the city.

These included some families who believed they had a more rightful claim to the throne than Justinian.

In 531 some members of the Blues and Greens had been arrested for murder in connection with deaths that occurred during rioting after a recent chariot race.

Relatively limited riots were not unknown at chariot races, similar to the football hooliganism that occasionally erupts after association football matches in modern times.

The murderers were to be executed, and most of them were.

But on January 10, 532, two of them, a Blue and a Green, escaped and were taking refuge in the sanctuary of a church surrounded by an angry mob.

Justinian was nervous:

He was in the midst of negotiating with the Persians over peace in the east at the end of the Iberian War.

And now he faced a potential crisis in his city.

Facing this, he declared that a chariot race would be held on 13 January and commuted the sentences to imprisonment.

The Blues and the Greens responded by demanding that the two men be pardoned entirely.

On 13 January 532, a tense and angry populace arrived at the Hippodrome for the races.

The Hippodrome was next to the palace complex, and thus Justinian could watch from the safety of his box in the palace and preside over the races.

From the start, the crowd had been hurling insults at Justinian.

By the end of the day, at race 22, the partisan chants had changed from “Blue” or “Green” to a unified Nika(“Win!” “Victory!” or “Conquer!“).

The crowds broke out and began to assault the palace.

For the next five days, the palace was under siege. 

The fires that started during the tumult resulted in the destruction of much of the city, including the city’s foremost church, the Hagia Sophia (which Justinian would later rebuild).

Some of the senators saw this as an opportunity to overthrow Justinian, as they were opposed to his new taxes and his lack of support for the nobility.

The rioters, now armed and probably controlled by their allies in the Senate, also demanded that Justinian dismiss the prefect John the Cappadocian and the quaestor Tribonian.

They then declared a new emperor, Hypatius, who was a nephew of former Emperor Anastasius I.

Justinian, in despair, considered fleeing, but his wife Theodora (500 – 548) is said to have dissuaded him, saying:

“Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss.

Never will I see the day when I am not saluted as Empress.”

She is also credited with adding:

“Who is born into the light of day must sooner or later die, and how could an Emperor ever allow himself to be a fugitive?“

Although an escape route across the sea lay open for the emperor, Theodora insisted that she would stay in the city, quoting an ancient saying:

“Royalty is a fine burial shroud.“

Above: Mosaic of Theodora

As Justinian rallied himself, he created a plan that involved Narses, a popular eunuch, as well as the generals Belisarius and Mundas.

Carrying a bag of gold given to him by Justinian, the slightly built eunuch entered the Hippodrome alone and unarmed against a murderous mob that had already killed hundreds.

Narses went directly to the Blues’ section, where he approached the important Blues and reminded them that Emperor Justinian supported them over the Greens.

He also reminded them that Hypatius, the man they crowned, was a Green.

Then, he distributed the gold.

The Blue leaders spoke quietly with each other and then they spoke to their followers.

Then, in the middle of Hypatius’ coronation, the Blues stormed out of the Hippodrome.

The Greens sat, stunned.

Then, Imperial troops led by Belisarius and Mundus stormed into the Hippodrome, killing any remaining rebels indiscriminately be they Blues or Greens.

About 30,000 rioters were reportedly killed.

Justinian also had Hypatius executed and exiled the senators who had supported the riot.

He then rebuilt Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia and was free to establish his rule.

Above: Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany’s final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Majdanek and Treblinka death camps.

After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto.

The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and right-wing Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) formed and began to train.

Above: ZOB flag

A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred Polish resistance groups to support the Jews in earnest.

The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who ordered the burning of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May.

A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated.

German casualties were probably fewer than 150, with Stroop reporting 110 casualties [16 killed + 1 dead/93 wounded].

It was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.

The Jews knew that the uprising was doomed and their survival was unlikely. 

Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said their inspiration to fight was “to pick the time and place of our deaths“.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the uprising was “one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people“.

And even on this day violence reigns….

More than 600 people have been arrested and troops have been deployed after a third consecutive night of riots in several Tunisian cities, officials said Monday.

The unrest came after Tunisia imposed a nationwide lockdown to stem a rise in corona virus infections on Thursday – the same day as it marked the 10th anniversary of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s fall from power.

Above: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1936 – 2019)

Interior ministry spokesperson Khaled Hayouni said a total of 632 people were arrested, notably “groups of people between the ages of 15, 20 and 25 who burned tires and bins in order to block movements by the security forces“.

Defence ministry spokesman Mohamed Zikri meanwhile said the army has deployed reinforcements in several areas of the country.

Hayouni said that some of those arrested lobbed stones at police and clashed with security forces.

“This has nothing to do with protest movements that are guaranteed by the law and the constitution,” said Hayouni.

“Protests take place in broad daylight normally without any criminal acts involved,” he added.

Hayouni said two police officers were wounded in the unrest.

It was not immediately clear if there were injuries among the youths and Hayouni did not say what charges those arrested faced.

The clashes took place in several cities across Tunisia, mostly in working-class neighborhoods with the exact reasons for the disturbances not immediately known.

But it came as many Tunisians are increasingly angered by poor public services and a political class that has repeatedly proved unable to govern coherently a decade on from the 2011 revolution.

GDP shrank by 9% last year, consumer prices have spiraled and one-third of young people are unemployed.

The key tourism sector, already on its knees after a string of deadly jihadist attacks in 2015, has been dealt a devastating blow by the pandemic.

Above: Flag of Tunisia

Tunisia has registered more than 177,000 corona virus infections, including over 5,600 deaths since the pandemic erupted last year (2 March 2020)

The four-day lockdown ended on Sunday night, but it was not immediately known if other restrictions would be imposed.

(As of 22 January 2021, Tunisia has 195,274 confirmed cases, 6,054 deaths.)

The army has deployed troops in Bizerte in the north, Sousse in the east and Kasserine and Siliana in central Tunisia, the defense ministry spokesperson said.

Above: Coat of arms of Tunisia

Sousse, a coastal resort overlooking the Mediterranean, is a magnet for foreign holidaymaking that has been hit hard by the pandemic.

The health crisis and ensuing economic misery have pushed growing numbers of Tunisians to seek to leave the country.

Above: Sousse, Tunisia

On Sunday evening in Ettadhamen, a restive working-class neighborhood on the edge of the Tunisian capital, the mood was sombre.

“I don’t see any future here,” said Abdelmoneim, a waiter, as the unrest unfolded around him.

He blamed the violence on the country’s post-revolution political class and said the rioting youths were “bored adolescents” who reflected the “failure” of politicians.

Abdelmoneim said he was determined to take a boat across the Mediterranean to Europe “as soon as possible and never come back to this miserable place.”

What has caught my attention is Hong Kong….

Hong Kong is like no other city on Earth.

It is a pulsating, densely populated fusion of East and West, lit by neon, fuelled by nonstop yumcha, dressed in faux Dior and serenaded by Cantopop.

And just when you think it is all too much, it is a secluded sandy beach on Lantau or a visit to a Taoist temple in the New Territories.

Despite its British colonial past, Hong Kong has always stuck to its roots.

The culture beneath the glitz is Chinese – with a twist.

With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842.

Above: Flag of the Qing Empire

The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898.

Above: Flag of British Hong Kong

The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997.

Above: Flag of China

As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems“.

Originally a sparsely populated area of farming and fishing villages, the territory has become one of the world’s most significant financial centres and commercial ports.

It is the world’s tenth-largest exporter and ninth-largest importer.

Hong Kong has a major capitalist service economy characterised by low taxation and free trade, and its currency, the Hong Kong dollar, is the 8th most traded currency in the world.

Hong Kong is home to the second-highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, the highest number of billionaires of any city in Asia, and the largest concentration of ultra high-net-worth individuals of any city in the world.

Although the city has one of the highest per capita incomes per se, severe income inequality exists, as well as a growing housing affordability and shortage crisis among the population.

Hong Kong is a highly developed territory and ranks 4th on the UN Human Development Index.

The city has the largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world.

Its residents have some of the highest life expectancies in the world.

The dense space led to a developed transportation network with public transport rates exceeding 90%.

There are three Hong Kongs.

Tourists see a Hong Kong where they cross the harbour on a crowded Star Ferry, head out for a night on Lamma Island by san-pan (night ferry), sip cocktails at sunset in a skyscraper bar overlooking the harbour, hop on the cable car at Ocean Park and enjoy the view of the cliffs down to Deep Water Bay, and ride the double-decker bus to Stanley Market.

Theirs is a Hong Kong of early morning bargains, crowds jostling for space, designer fakes, Jackie Chan, festivals all year round, expatriates, feng shui and dim sum, juk (breakfast rice pudding), cha siu bau (steamed pork buns), sinning jin yuen gain (pan-fried lemon chicken), she gang (snake soup), dong gafe (chilled coffee soft drink), bolei (green tea), Tsingdao beer, mao tai (Chinese wine), and the odd surprises that Hong Kong consumes more oranges than anywhere else on Earth.

Then there are those who feel that they are Chinese and others who feel they are Hong Kongese.

By the early 1990s, Hong Kong had established itself as a global financial centre and shipping hub.

The colony faced an uncertain future as the end of the New Territories lease approached, and Governor Murray MacLehose (1917 – 2000) raised the question of Hong Kong’s status with Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) in 1979.

Above: Governor Murray MacLehose

Above: Statue of Deng Xiaoping

Diplomatic negotiations with China resulted in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which the United Kingdom agreed to transfer the colony in 1997 and China would guarantee Hong Kong’s economic and political systems for 50 years after the transfer.

The impending transfer triggered a wave of mass emigration as residents feared an erosion of civil rights, the rule of law, and quality of life.

(So many Hong Kongese immigrated to Vancouver that the nickname “Hong-couver” came in vogue.)

Above: Vancouver

Over half a million people left the territory during the peak migration period, from 1987 to 1996.

The Legislative Council became a fully elected legislature for the first time in 1995 and extensively expanded its functions and organisations throughout the last years of the colonial rule.

Hong Kong was transferred to China on 1 July 1997, after 156 years of British rule.

Above: Legislative Council Complex (Legco)

Immediately after the transfer, Hong Kong was severely affected by several crises.

The government was forced to use substantial foreign exchange reserves to maintain the Hong Kong dollar’s currency peg during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. 

Above: Countries most affected by the Asian financial crisis

Recovery from this was muted by an H5N1 avian flu outbreak and a housing surplus.

This was followed by the 2003 SARS epidemic, during which the territory experienced its most serious economic downturn.

Political debates after the transfer of sovereignty have centred around the region’s democratic development and the central government’s adherence to the “one country, two systems” principle.

Relations between people in Hong Kong and mainland China have been relatively tense since the early 2000s.

Various factors have contributed, including:

• different interpretations of the “one country, two systems” principle
• policies of the Hong Kong and central governments to encourage mainland visitors to Hong Kong
• the changing economic environment.

More broadly, there exists resentment toward mainland-Hong Kong convergence or assimilation, and toward perceived interference from mainland China in Hong Kong’s internal affairs.

The terms agreed between the governments for the transfer included a series of guarantees for the maintenance of Hong Kong’s differing economic, political and legal systems after the transfer, and the further development of Hong Kong’s political system with a goal of democratic government.

These guarantees were set out in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and enshrined in the semi-constitutional Basic Law of Hong Kong.

Initially, many Hong Kongers were enthusiastic about Hong Kong’s return to China.

However, tension has arisen between Hong Kong residents and the mainland, and in particular the central government, since 1997, and especially in the late 2000s and early 2010s. 

Controversial policies such as the Individual Visit Scheme and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hogn Kong Express Rail Link have been seized on as focal points of discontent.

Some (2011) argue that since the Hong Kong government failed to force through the legislation to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law, Beijing’s relatively hands-off approach to Hong Kong changed dramatically.

This view holds that the PRC’s strategy is aimed at trying to dissolve the boundary between Hong Kong and the rest of China.

Some representatives of the government of mainland China have adopted increasingly strong rhetoric perceived to be attacking Hong Kong’s political and legal systems.

More formally, the Central People’s Government released a report in 2014 that asserts that Hong Kong’s judiciary should be subordinate to, and not independent of, the government. 

The Basic Law and the Sino-British Joint Declaration guarantee the development of Hong Kong’s electoral system towards universal suffrage, but the more pro-democracy parts of the Legislative Council rejected incremental progress.

By the time the central government stepped in with a view, the so-called Pan-Democrats had adopted an all-or-nothing strategy that derailed any hope of progress in time for elections in 2008–2018.

Above: National emblem of China

Hong Kong has more international cultural values from its past as a British colony and international city, and at the same time has retained many traditional Chinese cultural values, putting it in stark contrast to the culture of many parts of mainland China, where many international cultural values have never taken root and where many traditional cultural values were done away with following the Cultural Revolution.

Hong Kong is also a multi-ethnic society with different cultural values in relation to race, languages and cultures to those held by the Chinese government and many mainland residents.

As a highly developed economy with a high standard of living, Hong Kong culture has different values in relation to hygiene and social propriety compared to mainland China.

The cultural and economic differences are widely considered as a primary cause of the conflict between Hong Kong and mainland China.

The differences between Hong Kong people and mainlanders, such as language, as well as the significant growth in number of mainland visitors, have caused tension.

Since the implementation of Individual Visit Scheme on 28 July 2003, the number of mainland visitors increased from 6.83 million in 2002 to 40.7 million in 2013, according to the statistics provided by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

The conflict relates to issues regarding the allocation of resources between mainlanders and Hong Kong people in different sectors, such as healthcare and education.

In the final months of British rule, Hong Kong passed laws barring the extradition to mainland China due to concerns of freedoms promised under the one country, two systems formula.

Beijing began plans to reverse this law almost immediately after the handover in 1997.

In 2015, five people involved in selling books critical of the Chinese government disappeared and later reappeared in Chinese custody, becoming known as the Causeway Bay Books disappearances.

Above: The entrance of Causeway Bay Books. It has been closed since the disappearance of its fifth staff member, Lee Bo.

The Causeway Bay Books disappearances are a series of international disappearances concerning five staff members of Causeway Bay Books, a former bookstore located in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.

Between October and December 2015, five staff of Causeway Bay Books went missing.

At least two of them disappeared in mainland China, one in Thailand.

One member was last seen in Hong Kong, and eventually revealed to be in Shenzhen, across the Chinese border, without the travel documents necessary to have crossed the border through legal channels.

It was widely believed that the booksellers were detained in mainland China, and in February 2016 Guangdong provincial authorities confirmed that all five had been taken into custody in relation to an old traffic case involving Gui Minhai.

While response to the October disappearances had been muted, perhaps in recognition that unexplained disappearances and lengthy extrajudicial detentions are known to occur in mainland China, the unprecedented disappearance of a person in Hong Kong, and the bizarre events surrounding it, shocked the city and crystallised international concern over the possible abduction of Hong Kong citizens by Chinese public security bureau officials and their likely rendition, and the violation of several articles of the Basic Law.

Above: The missing booksellers

In his report to the British government and parliament in early January 2016, foreign secretary Philip Hammond said the incident was “a serious breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong and undermines the principle of one country, two systems“.

Above: Philip Hammond

Following the international focus on the disappearances, there were virtual reappearances by two of the missing men, Lee Bo, in the form of letters and photographs, and Gui Minhai, in a confessional video broadcast on national television, in which they insisted that their return to mainland China was voluntary but which failed to account for their movement across national borders.

These efforts were widely derided by commentators as a farce and a charade, as they failed to satisfy concerns over the breach of “one country, two systems” and its practical and constitutional implications.

On 16 June 2016, shortly after he returned to Hong Kong, Lam Wing-kee gave a long press conference in the presence of legislator Albert Ho in which he detailed the circumstances surrounding his eight-month detention, and describing how his confession and those of his associates had been scripted and stage-managed.

Lam indicated the involvement of the Central Investigation Team, which is under direct control of the highest level of the Beijing leadership.

His revelations stunned Hong Kong and made headlines worldwide, prompting a flurry of counter-accusations and denials from mainland authorities and supporters.

The push came to a head in 2017 when a Chinese billionaire living in Hong Kong named Xiao Jianhua was abducted from his serviced apartment in Hong Kong by Chinese security forces, as a spillover of China’s paramount leader and general secretary Xi Jinping’s mass anti-graft campaign.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection had been frustrated by the fact that it had to resort to extraordinary rendition and thereafter pushed for an extradition treaty.

The extradition law would eliminate the need for PRC agents to resort to kidnappings in Hong Kong.

In early 2018, 19-year-old Hong Kong resident Chan Tong-kai murdered his pregnant girlfriend Poon Hiu–wing in Taiwan, then returned to Hong Kong.

Chan admitted to Hong Kong police that he killed Poon, but the police were unable to charge him for murder or extradite him to Taiwan because no agreement is in place.

Above: Chan Tong-kai and Poon Hiu-wing

The two ordinances in Hong Kong, the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance, were not applicable to the requests for surrender of fugitive offenders and mutual legal assistance between Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The pro-Beijing flagship party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) chairwoman Starry Lee and legislator Holden Chow pushed for a change to the extradition law in 2019 using the murder case as rationale.

In February 2019, the government proposed changes to fugitive laws, establishing a mechanism for case-by-case transfers of fugitives by the Hong Kong Chief Executive to any jurisdiction with which the city lacks a formal extradition treaty, which it claimed would close the “legal loophole“. 

Chen Zjimin, Zhang Xiaoming, and Han Zheng of the PRC publicly supported the change and stated that 300 fugitives were living in Hong Kong.

Beijing’s involvement in the proposed bill caused great concerns in Hong Kong.

Above: The Great Hall of the People where the National People’s Congress convenes, Beijing

The Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019 was a proposed bill regarding extradition to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance in relation to special surrender arrangements and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance so that arrangements for mutual legal assistance can be made between Hong Kong and any place outside Hong Kong.

The bill was proposed by the Hong Kong government in February 2019 to establish a mechanism for transfers of fugitives not only for Taiwan, but also for Mainland China and Macau, which are currently excluded in the existing laws.

The introduction of the bill caused widespread criticism domestically and abroad from the legal profession, journalist organisations, business groups, and foreign governments fearing the erosion of Hong Kong’s legal system and its built-in safeguards, as well as damage to Hong Kong’s business climate.

Largely, this fear is attributed to China’s newfound ability through this bill to arrest voices of political dissent in Hong Kong.

There have been multiple protests against the bill in Hong Kong and other cities abroad.

On 9 June, protesters estimated to number from hundreds of thousands to more than a million marched in the streets and called for Chief Executive Carrie Lam to step down.

On 15 June, Lam announced she would ‘suspend‘ the proposed bill. 

Ongoing protests called for a complete withdrawal of the bill and subsequently the implementation of universal suffrage, which is promised in the Basic Law.

On 4 September, after 13 weeks of protests, Lam officially promised to withdraw the bill upon the resumption of the legislative session from its summer recess.

On 23 October, Secretary for Security John Lee announced the government’s formal withdrawal of the bill.

Above: Chief Executive Carrie Lam (centre) at the press conference with Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng (left) and Secretary for Security John Lee (right) one day after the massive protest on 9 June 2019

The 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, also known as Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, were triggered by the introduction of the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill by the Hong Kong government.

The now-aborted bill would have allowed extradition to jurisdictions with which Hong Kong did not have extradition agreements, including mainland China and Taiwan.

This led to concerns that Hong Kong residents and visitors would be exposed to the legal system of mainland China, thereby undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and infringing civil liberties.

It set off a chain of protest actions that began with a sit-in at the government headquarters on 15 March 2019, a demonstration attended by hundreds of thousands on 9 June 2019, followed by a gathering outside the Legislative Council Complex (Legco) to stall the bill’s second reading on 12 June which escalated into violence that caught the world’s attention.

On 16 June, just one day after the Hong Kong government suspended the bill, an even bigger protest took place to push for its complete withdrawal and in reaction to the perceived excessive use of force by the police on 12 June.

As the protests progressed, activists laid out five key demands:

• the withdrawal of the bill
• an investigation into alleged police brutality and misconduct
• the release of all the arrested
• a retraction of the official characterisation of the protests as “riots“
• the resignation of Carrie Lam as chief executive along with the introduction of universal suffrage in the territory.

Police inaction when suspected traid (mob) members assaulted protesters and commuters in Yuen Long on 21 July and the police storming of Prince Edward Station on 31 August further escalated the protests.

Lam withdrew the bill on 4 September, but refused to concede the other four demands.

Exactly one month later, she invoked the emergency powers to implement an anti-mask law, to counterproductive effect.

Confrontations escalated and intensified – police brutality and misconduct allegations increased, while some protesters started using petrol bombs and vandalising pro-Beijing establishments and symbols representing the government.

Rifts within society widened and activists from both sides assaulted each other.

The storming of the Legislative Council in July 2019, the deaths of Chow Tsz-lok (due to injuries sustained after a fall from the third floor towards the second floor of the Sheung Tak car park in Tseung Kwan O on 4 November) (1997 – 2019) and Luo Changqing (a 70-year-old government-contracted cleaner, died from head injuries sustained after he was hit by a brick thrown by Hong Kong protestors during a violent confrontation between two groups in Sheung Shui on 13 November 2019), the shooting of an unarmed protester, and the sieges of two universities in November 2019 were landmark events.

After the conflict of Chinese University and siege of the Polytechnic University, the unprecedented landslide victory of the pro-democracy camp in the District Council elections in November and the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 brought a little respite.

Tensions mounted again in May 2020 after Beijing’s decision to promulgate a national security bill for Hong Kong before September.

This was criticised by many as a threat to fundamental political freedoms and civil liberties ostensibly enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law, and prompted some in the international community to re-evaluate their policies towards Hong Kong, which they deemed as no longer autonomous.

The approval ratings of the government and the police plunged to the lowest point since the 1997 handover.

The Central People’s Government alleged that foreign powers were instigating the conflict, although the protests have been largely described as “leaderless“.

China further tightened its control in Hong Kong in 2020:

On 4 January, the State Council dismissed Wang Zhimin from the role of director of the Hong Kong Liaison Office and appointed Luo Huining as his successor.

The decision was widely linked to the poor performance of pro-government candidates at the District Council elections in November, and Wang’s perceived poor judgment of how the protests evolved.

Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office director Zhang Xiaoming was demoted and replaced by Xia Baolong in February 2020.

The new directors triggered the Basic Law Article 22 contorversy in April when they claimed that the two offices were not covered by Article 22.

In May, China announced that the NPCSC, China’s rubber stamp legislative body, would directly draft a national security law for Hong Kong and skip the local legislation procedures.

Political analysts believed that Beijing’s action would mark the end of the “one country, two systems” principle and Hong Kong’s autonomy as promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

On 28 May 2020, the NPC approved the controversial national security laws for Hong Kong.

The legislation allows the government’s national security agencies to operate in Hong Kong.

On 30 June 2020, China implemented “Hong Kong national security law“.

Its 66 articles target crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, and includes serious penalties between ten years of prison to life imprisonment.

China made promises to Hong Kong to facilitate its handover from Britain, with the understanding the the one country, two systems policy would remain in effect until Hong Kong was legally assimiliated in 2047.

But a dictatorship cannot tolerate a democracy within its domains, so after the handover the Legislative Council was changed to a system wherein the Chairperson is appointed by Beijing, 40 seats of 70 were chosen by the Hong Kongese people, the remaining 30 seats are chosen by companies who are pro-Beijing.

Fear of losing the rights that China had promised compelled protests in 2003, 2014 and 2019.

The 2019 protests were remarkable for the protesters’ tactics and methods.

By possessing a decentralized and anonymous leadership structure, flexible tactics and a unity and cohesion of purpose, the protesters engaged with the authorities by:

• anonymity: to prevent arrest of identifiable protesters
• “hit and run”: start a protest, run once police spotted
• geographical dispersal: many protests in many locales across a large area
• non-cooperation: police not attacked but not obeyed
• police station blockades: hard to arrest protesters if you can’t leave the station
• human chains (at one point, 135,000 protesters formed the Hong Kong Way) across trafficked areas
• nightly democratic chants
• petition campaigns
• online activism
• doxing: the malicious Internet search for and publication of private or identifying information about a particular person
• broadcasts via phome applications
• advertising on posters on walls designated “Lennon walls”
• press conferences held by protesters

There is no disputing that the protests were large.

At its largest moments over one million people joined the ranks of dissent.

But not all these protesters were violent.

A small group within the larger mass practiced acts of vandalism and violence, giving Beijing the excuse it needed to respond against these “rioters and criminals” in the name of law and order, public safety and security.

Protest violence is met with force.

And the memory of Tiananmen Square lingers.

The Tiananmen Square protests or the Tiananmen Square Incident, known in China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing during 1989.

The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the ’89 Democracy Movement.

The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People’s Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.

In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military’s advance into Tiananmen Square.

Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.

The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Communist general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country’s future.

The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy.

Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation.

Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.

At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the Square.

As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership.

By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities.

Among the CCP top leadership, Premier Li Peng and Party Elders Li Xiannian and Wang Zhen called for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win over Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and President Yang Shangkun to their side.

On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law and mobilized as many as 300,000 troops to Beijing.

The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process.

The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.

The international community, human rights organisations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre.

Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China.

The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests.

More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms begun in 1986 and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in 1992.

Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China, limits that have lasted up to the present day.

Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of Communist Party rule and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

And it is the memory of Tiananmen, despite the legitimacy of the Hong Kongese protesters requests, despite how the violence on both sides marred the image of both, that has led other nations to become concerned about Hong Kong’s future as a teetering democracy within a dictatorial dominion.

Britain will not walk away from the people of Hong Kong and will have “no choice” but to offer them a route to UK citizenship if China strips them of their freedom, Boris Johnson has warned.

The Prime Minister has made offering the island’s residents “an alternative” to Chinese repression a matter of national honour in a dramatic escalation of the confrontation with Beijing.

Above: Boris Johnson

Writing in the Times, Johnson said that the Chinese imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong would “dramatically erode its autonomy” and breach the terms of its treaty with the UK.

He said that he would “willingly” implement one of the “biggest changes in our visa system in British history” to offer nearly three million Hong Kong residents extended visa-free access to Britain and the chance to obtain citizenship.

“Britain would then have no choice but to uphold our profound ties of history and friendship with the people of Hong Kong“, he said.

“Today, about 350,000 of the territory’s people hold British National (Overseas) passports and another 2.5 million would be eligible to apply for them.

At present, these passports allow visa-free access to the United Kingdom for up to six months.“

“If China imposes its national security law, the British government will change our immigration rules and allow any holder of these passports from Hong Kong to come to the UK for a renewable period of 12 months and be given further immigration rights, including the right to work, which could place them on a route to citizenship.”

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, told MPs yesterday that:

“There is time for China to reconsider.

There is a moment for China to step back from the brink and respect China’s own international obligations.“

He noted that he had already discussed contingency plans and the possibility of “burden sharing” with countries including Canada, Australia and the US in the event that the law creates a huge exodus of Hong Kongese.

Above: Dominic Raab

The Hong Kongese have been the pawn of empires less concerned about their well-being than the acquisition and maintenance of power and wealth.

The Hong Kongese have legitimate concerns and speaking against those who would remove their democratic ways is the rigth thing to do.

But protest violently committed leads to justification of repression.

Regimes do not willingly surrender their grip on power regardless of how wrong their repression may be.

Protest should continue, but change will be slower in coming if the image of national security appears threatened by violent demonstrations.

Power is maintained not only by force of arms but by the consent of the masses.

Image is everything.

Change is possible when the force that oppresses is made to realize that there is greater loss in oppression than the granting of dignity to the populace.

It takes time, but change is possible.

If enough people want it.

There is an old Chinese proverb that says a peasant must stand a long time on a hillside with his mouth open before a roast duck flies in.

But that being said, I agree with James Joyce (1882 – 1941) when he writes that movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on a hillside.

Above: James Joyce, Zürich, 1918

The bigness of China makes you wonder how much is truly understandable to the outsider.

Being mistaken is the essence of the outsider.

Discovering the reality of China is full of peculiar discoveries, but as well full of missteps and misunderstanding.

It is easy to get lost in the surrealism of that which is foreign to one’s own experience.

But somewhere between the security of convinction in what is familiar and the fear of what is different lies a land of commonality in a shared humanity.

Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.

The advent of a world in which human beings enjoy freedom of speech and belief, freedom from fear and want, is the highest aspiration of the common people.

I truly wish that we did not have moments when we are compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebel against tyranny and oppression, to struggle for human rights that should be protected by the rule of law.

I do believe it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, but not at the cost of neglecting our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.

I believe in the equal rights of men and women and I believe that social progress and better standards of life are possible only in a free society.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride toward Freedom / Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail / Frances Elliott, “PM offers hope of refuge to 3m Hong Kong people“, The Times, 3 June 2020 / United Nations Declaration of Human Rights