(Update: The photos are up here now.)
Hong Kong's 'Honkies' aren't really known as
the ripping-some-mad-shit-up type. But they try.
Around 100,000-200,000 of them took to the streets today in a massive demonstration to protest against plans by the Government to slow down democratic reforms in Hong Kong, perhaps indefinitely.
Ahem. Except not quite so confrontational. It was more a... widely attended march "aimed at expressing discontentment over the government's package proposals for Hong Kong's constitutional development".
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I'm reporting from Public Address' newly established Hong Kong Bureau. (I bagsed Bureau Chief.) It's been quite a bit of work, but the bureau is now mostly functional, though the case fan is a bit noisy and the DVD-RAM is bung. But it's got a 10mb connection and unlimited traffic...
I thought only kids with daddies who owned telcos had connections like this, but no, this is just what people have over here. It's funny, coming to a place with fiber-optics blasting ultra-speed internet out the wazoo, trying to explain to people how "broadband" at home means a pale, woeful 256k imitation of the real thing.
When will we get the big-people internet?
Maybe tomorrow.
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The issue at hand is that the Hong Kong Chief Executive - the Head of Government - is not directly elected. Rather, the top job is appointed by a 800-member committee, which itself is directly elected by a small number of people in "Functional Constituencies".
Check it out - it's complicated, it's tedious, it's diabolically legalicious.
It's Socialism with Byzantine Characteristics.
The general idea was that Hong Kong needed time to develop the civic vigour required to have real elections. You know, like, breed more bloggers and stuff. By 2007, 10 years after Britain handed Hong Kong back to China, the time would be ripe to move to universal suffrage. Or it might be 'move *towards* universal suffrage'. One or the other.
Cue lawyers.
Rather than universal suffrage, the Government is trying to expand the indirect election system so that more people get to kinda vote. The idea of universal suffrage is still good, but Hong Kong is just going to have to wait.
Having waited 10 years, people in Hong Kong are, shall we say, somewhat disinclined to wait until the Communist Party decides to hold an election for them.
Cue polite Sunday march.
There were a lot of old people and families with <a target="_blank" href="small children - they certainly weren't an excitable lot. In fact, a lot of it got out-right boring. They kept doing shit like obeying police instructions and "maintaining orderly behaviour", which was a bit disheartening.
It sounds strange, but the slogans were spectacular. Everyone had copies of a local (and evidently liberal) newspaper, Apple Daily, which did a double-page broadsheet spread that could be used as a placard. On it: "I want to see an election." But the meaning was not just see, in the sense of "I want this to happen", but in the sense of "I want to witness it finally happen", "I want to see this part of history through".
The sticker on this guy puts it in terms easier to translate. It says:
"Tell me, will I see the day when we have universal suffrage?"
It's snappier in Chinese, but the idea of dashed hope was very powerful. On one hand, it's expressing their own democratic aspirations and how important they are; on the other, they're asking the Chinese Government to quit the bullshit and tell them whether it'll *ever* happen.
Maybe tomorrow.