'Death knell' of press freedom in Hong Kong has been a long time coming // Young Marxists are going missing in China after protesting for workers
Every day before work, Kevin Lau stopped for breakfast at a restaurant in Sai Wan Ho, a residential area in eastern Hong Kong. It was a routine as ingrained in him as brushing his teeth, and it nearly cost him his life. On a morning in February 2014, Lau -- a senior editor at the popular, upmarket daily Ming Pao -- had parked his car on a street near the restaurant when two men, wearing motorcycle helmets and gloves, rushed up to him. One slashed at Lau with a meat cleaver, knocking him to the floor, where he lay bleeding with deep wounds in his back and legs as his assailants ran off.
With what a court later described as "superhuman calm," Lau phoned for an ambulance, and was rushed to hospital. He survived, and two men with triad links -- Yip Kim-wah and Wong Chi-wah -- were arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm. While Yip and Wong were later jailed, they did not reveal who had commissioned and paid for the attack, one of several against journalists in Hong Kong at that time, including the firebombing of the home and office of Jimmy Lai, publisher of the Apple Daily, a tabloid highly critical of the Chinese government.
In the wake of the attack against Lau, several thousand journalists and supporters took to the streets, dressed in black and carrying banners which read "They Can't Kill Us All" in a defiant show of support for press freedom in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. It was a tense period for journalists in Hong Kong. The sense of despair was lifted, temporarily, by the so-called Umbrella Revolution mass pro-democracy protests that broke out in late 2014. Those demonstrations saw the international media spotlight swing onto Hong Kong, and the local press rose to the challenge, covering every aspect of the protests and their fallout, and winning multiple awards in the process.
Indeed, in the wake of the protests, reporters' assessment of press freedom in the city rose for the first time in years, according to the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA). But just as the Umbrella protests eventually gave way to widespread disillusionment, as hoped for reforms never panned out, and multiple prominent pro-democracy figures were jailed, recent weeks have seen a collapse in confidence among the city's small journalist community, and renewed fears of self-censorship, prosecution and violence. On November 9 this year, the HKJA warned of the "death knell of freedom of speech" in the city... read more:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/15/asia/hong-kong-press-freedom-intl/index.html
Young Marxists are going missing in China after protesting for workers
With what a court later described as "superhuman calm," Lau phoned for an ambulance, and was rushed to hospital. He survived, and two men with triad links -- Yip Kim-wah and Wong Chi-wah -- were arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm. While Yip and Wong were later jailed, they did not reveal who had commissioned and paid for the attack, one of several against journalists in Hong Kong at that time, including the firebombing of the home and office of Jimmy Lai, publisher of the Apple Daily, a tabloid highly critical of the Chinese government.
In the wake of the attack against Lau, several thousand journalists and supporters took to the streets, dressed in black and carrying banners which read "They Can't Kill Us All" in a defiant show of support for press freedom in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. It was a tense period for journalists in Hong Kong. The sense of despair was lifted, temporarily, by the so-called Umbrella Revolution mass pro-democracy protests that broke out in late 2014. Those demonstrations saw the international media spotlight swing onto Hong Kong, and the local press rose to the challenge, covering every aspect of the protests and their fallout, and winning multiple awards in the process.
Indeed, in the wake of the protests, reporters' assessment of press freedom in the city rose for the first time in years, according to the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA). But just as the Umbrella protests eventually gave way to widespread disillusionment, as hoped for reforms never panned out, and multiple prominent pro-democracy figures were jailed, recent weeks have seen a collapse in confidence among the city's small journalist community, and renewed fears of self-censorship, prosecution and violence. On November 9 this year, the HKJA warned of the "death knell of freedom of speech" in the city... read more:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/15/asia/hong-kong-press-freedom-intl/index.html
Young Marxists are going missing in China after protesting for workers
Fear is sweeping
through the campuses of China's elite universities following a nationwide
government crackdown aimed at silencing left-wing student activists, who had
been campaigning for greater rights and protections for ordinary workers. Since August at least
nine young Chinese labor advocates have been forcibly detained in major cities
across the country, a sharp escalation in Beijing's campaign
against student activism on university campuses.
"The whole of
Peking University is like under the white terror now, (the security guards)
will come after you even if you were just at the scene where the student
activists were distributing leaflets," a student at the prestigious Peking
University told CNN Tuesday. On Friday, one
graduate, Zhang Shengye, was attacked and dragged into a car at the Beijing
university by several people in black jackets, according to a widely circulated
open letter. "Someone used his
arm to put me in a headlock and pushed me forward ... My glasses were missing
in the chaos, and I was pressed to the ground," the letter writer and
fellow activist, Yu Tianfu, said. "I struggled to
say, 'Who are you? Why can you do such a thing?' A man pointed to my head
before I could finish and said ferociously, 'Stop shouting otherwise I will
beat you again.'" A grassroots student
movement, led by activists labeling themselves Marxists and calling for greater
workers' rights, has become a growing problem for the Chinese government in
recent years.
Under Chinese
President Xi Jinping, Beijing has increasingly cracked down on all forms of
dissent, including human rights activists, labor groups and religious
organizations. Activists and analysts
have pointed out the irony of the socialist Chinese government, led by the
theoretically pro-worker Communist Party, cracking down on young Marxists. Xi in particular has
been enthusiastically pushing the country to embrace its Marxist roots following his ascension to the
head of the Communist Party in 2012. Eli Friedman, an
associate professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell University
who has been in contact with the Chinese student groups supporting workers'
rights, said the crackdown would only serve to undermine the party's
legitimacy. "What is socialism if not standing with the workers?" he
told CNN
Student solidarity: The growing crackdown
has its roots in a labor dispute in southern China, beginning in June, where a
group of workers at Shenzhen's Jasic Technology called to set up a trade union. The government
declined their request and, after a month of petitioning, dozens of workers
were detained by police in July, according to the group. Others claimed they
were beaten by security personnel while protesting... read more:
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