A cry for help from Hong Kong

An old friend of mine, a Hong Kong resident, sent me this note from his wife yesterday. There have been news reports all evening of escalating levels of violence at the university she mentions. There are obviously great differences between the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong but violent repression won't settle them any more than violent repression approaching genocide has "settled" Tibetan Buddhism, Uighur Islam or Falun Gong Taoism. But it seems to be communist atheism or nothing in the PRC. -- wmh

Bill—

I just received this message from my wife in Hong Kong. In any way you can, please spread the word condemning police brutality and violence there. If you know anybody who has the clout to influence the US government to condemn the violence, please contact them. Thanks for your support.
K

The HK Polytechnic University is now being besieged by the police, after that of the Chinese University of HK. The outskirt towers are taken by them. The students, a few hundred of them, are resisting bravely. They have been resisting for over 48 hours. Many of them have written their death notes. We have reason to believe that after tonight, when the police has broken into the campus, certain of these, brave, young people will be tortured or killed and will become one of the countless dead bodies which have been found all over Hong Kong in recent months.

If you have read this, please talk to your government and persuade them to use all means of diplomacy to save these young people. There are obvious reasons that a government does not launch military attack on its own universities, does not take the lives of its brightest generation, does not undermine the freedom of thought and expression in its own city. Please help Hong Kong!

MONDAY MORNING UPDATE:

Bill—

What almost never gets reported in the western press is that the escalation of violence in HK has been caused by the police and their hired Triad (mafia) thugs from mainland China. The police have dressed up as protestors and instigated violence and then blamed it on the protestors. The police have attacked innocent bystanders in subway stations, beating people up, arresting them, taking them to detention centers where they’re abused physically and sexually. The police have responded to peaceful marches with tear gas and arrests and beating people up. The Triad thugs hired by the HK government have beaten up protestors, putting many in the hospital—and when HK people called the equivalent of 911 to get support against the Triad thugs, the police left their calls unanswered by the thousands. It’s an old strategy, used by the Nazis and other totalitarian governments: instigate violence and blame it on the protestors and on “foreign agents”, justifying using live ammunition, murder, and mass arrests. The protestors have not escalated the vkoehce—they’ve only responded to the police brutality and violence by not backing down. They backed down in the Umbrella Movement in 2014-2016, and nothing changed in Hong Kong. Now they’re not going to back down—because backing down means living under China’s totalitarian rule where there is no rule of law, no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom of assembly—a frightening new digital Cultural Revolution.

K