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Just Saying | Is this the price we pay for loving Hong Kong too much?
- Yonden Lhatoo offers a loving little reality check, amid all the political grandstanding and paranoia over the city’s national security law, to remind us how and why we got here
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So Hong Kong’s police unit recently set up to enforce the new national security law has issued arrest warrants for half a dozen activists who have fled the city. They’re accused of inciting secession and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.
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The only one of note among this motley crew of self-styled dissidents, would-be freedom fighters and somewhat confused independence advocates, frankly speaking, is Nathan Law Kwun-chung, a bright young man with a once-promising future who was controversially stripped of the Legislative Council seat he won by popular vote back in 2017.
While some of his peers who were disqualified along with him had openly derided their sovereign government and contemptuously mangled their oath-taking, Law’s only crime to be kicked out of the legislature was to insert an upward inflection while reading out the words, “I swear allegiance to … the People’s Republic of China”, making it sound like he was asking a sarcastic question.
Oh, and he also quoted Indian independence hero Mahatma Gandhi in saying, “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”
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