Protesting the Philippines!

Hong Kong appears to be really ace-ing the Protest March thing. Definitely!

As you know, that strange and corrupt little "government" they have over there in the Philippines began almost immediately to lie to Hong Kong - like it's knee-jerk or they can't help themselves or something - insulting our collective intelligence in a vast number of belittling ways.  PLUS what they were telling us about their investigation into the events even in the preliminary stages wasn't ringing true ... but they refused to let the vastly better trained HK Police get involved in any capacity.

Thus, on Sunday, between 30,000 and 80,000 folk - depending what report you read - took to the streets demanding that the Philippines Government do a "Thorough Investigation for The Truth!" according to the banners in three languages: English, Chinese and Filipino!

This march started out as the Filipino community showing solidarity with HK and expressing their anger at their "government", but then it was joined by the Thai Community since Thais own the tour company our twenty-three hostages were on, and then the Pro-Democracy crew came aboard to help organise things, which was so welcome since they have so much experience in getting together enormous protests, and then the Pro-Beijing crew jumped onto the band wagon so they wouldn't be left out of what was increasingly obvious "A Just Cause"!

It worked!  According to SCMP yesterday, Hong Kong CSI has now got permission to check out the bus, and there will be HK police allowed into the investigation, although, sadly, only observing.

But it was a win, win, win for us, wasn't it! Yayyyy!  Go Hong Kong!

But what I really liked about that protest march was the symbolism.  Take a look:

As you can see, the marchers all wore either black or white or a combination of both; black because the Philippines is a Catholic country and that is the Christian colour for death and mourning, and white because it is the Chinese colour for death and mourning.

Combining the two different Symbolisms!  Nice, right!

And what was also really very very nice was how well organised that whole process of filing out of Victoria Park and into the street was. We went down to watch the start of the march and it's just so different from 2003 when we first protested here!  As you may recall from previous posts, back then we were almost crushed to death by the half million trying to get out of the same small gate, which is the reason why we now refuse to join up with any protest march until it reaches Wan Chai. However, now they have this wonderful arrangement where people file out to the streets from ALL the exits, including the sky bridges.

What a difference seven years of protesting makes, la!

That's how long pragmatic and formerly apolitical HK has been protesting!  Yes, we all know that the first one ever was a knee-jerk swarm of three million who spontaneously streamed into the streets and onto Government House back in 1989 after seeing news footage of the Tienanmen Square Incident, to plead with the British "Please don't give us back to that horrible country.", which lead to the creation of The Basic Law, "the one country, two systems" law, which gives HK a proudly defended separate sovereignty to China!

But as an organised body, the first ever real protest was back in 2003 when Beijing planned to introduce "Article 23" into The Basic Law, a nasty piece of Legislative Skulduggery that didn't fool HK for a minute, and lead to the half million taking to the streets to say "No way on earth are you going to do this to us!!!"

Truly, if you want to be scared out of your wits, check out that harmless sounding "Article 23".  It has severe ramifications for the whole world too, so you definitely should be joining HK to not let it happen.

We stopped that one in its tracks back in 2003 ... however Beijing is now talking about how "now that we're more mature" trying to bring it back!

Like I said, Hong Kong really IS getting very skilled at the entire Protest process!