An astonishing, recent, series of seven articles outlining the history of the Hong Kong Alliance In Support Of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.
First article from 29/07/22, current one from 26/08/22.
(Edited to add ...
I first met Szeto Wah back in 1996 when we were pushing for laws to criminalise the discrimination against women in the workplace. He was a man with extraordinary depth of character and breadth of vision. Highly educated, he was wholly committed; an iron-clad integrity derived from a vast well of wisdom combined with huge compassion and endless courage, tempered by an innate modesty and laced with a sharp, biting sense of humour.
He was a fucking giant. And I still miss him to bits.
RIP Uncle Wah!
I became progressively closer to The Alliance over the next few years and spent some happy times in the late 1990s and early 2000s with Cheung Mo [Long Hair], and others, late on Saturday nights in the tiny music-room in the back of "Club 64" [established in the early nineties and named after the 8964 massacre, it was a small, narrow, grubby, late-night, cheap, dive-bar hangout for activists, artists, poets, students, intellectuals and the LGBT community - and the late-night-after-work-chill-out-place for local musicians for weekly jam sessions - mostly jazz. Thank you Rose for creating that amazing fucking space for us all. It was vibrant, central, essential, magical - and you knew it, you knew what you were doing - thank you!].
We would sit, well into the early hours of Sunday mornings, sharing tales and laughter over bottles of very-cheap-very-drinkable red wine, while organising for upcoming protests and the annual vigil and plotting strategies for the next LegCo elections. Those were the days. It was sublime.
We were a brand-new-born entity, spawned in 1997. We were full of hope, full of energy and pushing confidently forward to a fully democratic future with a fire in our belly. We were, finally, to be the architects of our own destiny under the promise of "Hong Kong People Ruling Hong Kong".
For a few, brief years, we tasted freedom. We saw the future and the future was bright. A progressive, tolerant, inclusive social-democracy populated by intelligent, open minded, well travelled, educated, hardworking people.
We believed in it.
We were wrong.
So we fought for it.
We lost.
I weep again tonight as so many old friends still languish in jail, without trial, for 18 months.
None of them are charged with any kind of violence or incitement to violence, they were always and still are strident advocates of peaceful, non-violent protest - each and every one of them.
And so to bed and weep I must, with some soothing music.
It's all so hard.)
Be nice to each other peeps.
Woof
hongkongfp.com
If there is a war in the Straits of Taiwan 20 nanosecond cannon will feature, at the shorter the range the better....and tha'ts not Macron
