After student arrested for carrying laser-pointers, Hong Kong protesters stage "stargazing" laser-protest

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/08/pew-pew-2.html

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These HK protesters make me proud. I really really hope they are able to get meaningful change made

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I hope so too but long term I think they will sadly lose.

The police have claimed that the lasers have caused eye damage to officers

hate to admit it, but given that pretty powerful laserpointer are freely sold in china, this is entirely possible.

Yeah, no way China is going to let them slip away. I do fear for them but I want to hope for the best

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The 1989 Tiananmen Protest ended up as the Tiananmen Massacre.

Yes, if history is any indication.

Trigger warning: violence against humans is depicted in the video.
… see also:

In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: 天安门大屠杀), troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military’s advance into Tiananmen Square. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundreds to several thousands, with thousands more wounded.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

(btw this tragic real-life history is not taught in Chinese schools)

One only has to look at the precedents here to realize that the current ruling class headed up by Xi Jinping is no more willing to change or remove itself from the running of China, including Chinese territories/acquisitions like Hong Kong, Macau, than Deng Xiaoping’s crew was.

Here’s another case study of Chinese activists working for change, and the predictable aftermath:

Sept. 28, 2018
HUIZHOU, China — They were exactly what China’s best universities were supposed to produce: young men and women steeped in the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.

They read Marx, Lenin and Mao and formed student groups to discuss the progress of socialism. They investigated the treatment of the campus proletariat, including janitors, cooks and construction workers. They volunteered to help struggling rural families and dutifully recited the slogans of President Xi Jinping.

Then, after graduation, they attempted to put the party’s stated ideals into action, converging from across China last month on Huizhou, a city in the south, to organize labor unions at nearby factories and stage protests demanding greater protections for workers.

That’s when the party realized it had a problem.

The authorities moved quickly to crush the efforts of the young activists, detaining several dozen of them and scrubbing the internet of their calls for justice — but not before their example became a rallying cry for young people across the country unhappy with growing inequality, corruption and materialism in Chinese society. […]

As a result, being a political activist in China is looking more and more like a suicide mission.

Apparently booming rates of organ transplantation—including for transplant tourism—suggest the country is using “a larger supply of organs than could be sourced from executed criminals alone,” the tribunal website previously noted.

“Based on multiple sources of information, it has been alleged that prisoners of conscience have been killed ‘to order’ for the purposes of extracting and using their organs for profitable transplantation surgery,” it continued.

ETA: to be clear, I am hoping against hope that Hong Kong does not devolve into violent crackdowns, mass abductions of activists, sham trials and speedy executions, collective punishment etc. I just see the historical context pointing toward Chinese government responding with overwhelming force and deadly outcomes, which makes me all the more in awe of these people who have chosen to stand up for what they believe in. For those of us who pray, let us pray that the Chinese government for once chooses not to kill its own people [again].

ETA2: grammar argh

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I remember Tiananmen from my childhood, I hope it won’t come to that as China knows the world is watching but if it does we can’t stop it. No other country will risk a direct confrontation with them.

China will play the long game I suspect, in the end Hong Kong will fall.

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And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah

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