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9 Arrested Over Plot To Plant Bombs Around Hong Kong 

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This Tuesday Hong Kong police arrested nine people due to suspicion that they were engaging in terrorist activity. The officers made the arrest after it was uncovered that the group was attempting to make explosives to allegedly plant around the city. 

Hong Kong is currently rather politically divided, and the past two years have been especially futile. Massive pro-democracy protests have erupted all throughout the city, as well as China in general, and these arrests come just one year after Beijing imposed strict security laws. 

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Of the nine individuals arrested six of them are secondary school students. The group was attempting to make the explosive chemical triacetone triperoxide (TATP) in a homemade laboratory hostel, according to police reports. 

Police claimed “the group planned to use the TATP to bomb court buildings, cross-harbor tunnels, railways, and even planned to put some of these explosives in trash bins on the street to maximize damage caused by society.” 

The authorities said they seized an apparatus and raw materials that would typically be used to make the TATP, as well as trace amounts of the explosive as well. Operating manuals and about 80,000 Hong Kong dollars in cash was also taken in at the scene. 

Police froze around 600,000 Hong Kong dollars worth of assets that may also be linked to the bombing plot. The group was allegedly planning on setting off all the explosives as they left the city of Hong Kong for good.

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TATP is unfortunately a very common chemical among terrorist organizations and groups. Since 2019, Hong Kong police have made multiple arrests over alleged bomb plots and for making TATP illegally. 

Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam spoke at a news briefing this week to discuss the threats of violence that Hong Kong is facing. 

“I hope members of the public will openly condemn threats of violence. They should not be wrongly influenced by the idea that there is only government tyranny. They should not be influenced into thinking that they can find excuses to inflict violence.”

Lam claimed that an envelope of white powder had been sent to her office but police concluded this Tuesday that the substance didn’t initially seem to be dangerous, but further tests would still be performed to make sure.

Hong Kong Protest

After Pro-Democracy Candidates Win in Hong Kong, China Blames US

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The city of Hong Kong has for months been embroiled in violent pro-democracy protests, and a recent election during which pro-democracy candidates won in a landslide has proven that the majority of Hong Kong citizens support the expansion of civil liberties in the territory. While the election was relatively minor politically, as it was limited to district councils, it was broadly seen both by people in Hong Kong and in China as a referendum on the protests. In a historic victory for Hong Kong democracy, around 70% of the eligible population turned out to vote, resulting in several pro-China officials being replaced with candidates favored by protestors across the territory.

Beijing was caught off-guard by the results of the election, as the Chinese government believed that a silent pro-Beijing majority lived in Hong Kong and that voters would side with pro-Beijing politicians in order to end the chaos and violence. After the election disproved this theory, however, Chinese state-run media was initially silent, marking a major change from its pre-election rhetoric, which consisted of arguments predicting an electoral rebuke of protestors. In fact, the state-run media did not even report the results of the election at first, instead announcing that the ballots had been cast and that protests had disrupted the electoral process. Eventually, the Chinese government decided on a strategy for framing their electoral loss by placing the blame on a foreign actor, namely the United States.

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Blaming the West for domestic problems is a favorite tactic among Chinese officials, and the Chinese people react positively to nationalistic messages of this sort. However, the fact that the Chinese government had to switch propaganda tactics so suddenly reflects not only the extent of their loss, but also their own lack of understanding of the political crisis that has animated six months of massive protests. Although there’s no strong evidence that the US interfered with Hong Kong’s recent election, this message is useful for the Chinese as it allows them to shift blame away from themselves and away from the people of Hong Kong.

For months, Beijing’s portrayal of the Hong Kong protestors was that they were violent thugs looking to tear apart the party by colluding with foreign powers. There is little, if any truth to this claim, which has lost a significant amount of credibility after the election, which represented a tremendous embrace of democracy by the Hong Kong people, both in terms of the number of people who voted and how they voted. The fact that Beijing was caught so off-guard by this result also suggests that the Chinese government, at least in part, believes their own propaganda, and doesn’t understand the extent of the outrage felt by the people of Hong Kong.

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Hong Kong’s leadership, which remains firmly in the pro-Beijing camp, sought to downplay the results of the election. Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam acknowledged that people in the territory are upset, but argued against the view that the election had broad implications. After the election, Chinese officials complained about a bill passed by the US Congress called the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which supports the protests. Notably, however, President Trump has remained relatively quiet about the protests, instead focusing on his trade war with China.

The future of Hong Kong’s government remains unclear, but neither side of the conflict shows signs of backing down. Hong Kong protests continue to this day, and enjoy wide support from the territory’s citizens, but China is an extremely powerful country that has ramped up its attacks on the pro-democracy advocates. For the citizens of Hong Kong, particularly the young protestors, the gradual loss of democracy in the territory is unacceptable, and they will go to remarkable lengths to ensure that Hong Kong maintains its autonomy.

Hong Kong Protest

Hong Kong Protests Escalate As 1,000 Citizens Detained at University

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The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have been ongoing for several months now and show no signs of slowing anytime soon, and are in fact escalating in intensity as a Hong Kong university was transformed into a battlefield between police and demonstrators, which ended with hundreds of young people jailed. Roughly a dozen protestors remain inside the school after heavily armed police officers surrounded the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, arresting many protestors who eventually surrendered to the authorities. Some students were able to escape without being captured by police by rappelling from a bridge to be rescued by motorbike drivers, while others unsuccessfully attempted to use a sewage pipe to escape. 

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The protests began as a response to proposed legislation to make it easier to extradite Hong Kong residents to China which was feared to impact Hong Kong’s independence and political freedoms. While the legislation in question has since been withdrawn, the aim of the protests has expanded to demand a stronger democracy in Hong Kong, further independence from China, and greater police accountability. The police have escalated their attempts to quell the protestors, using live ammunition on multiple occasions. These actions have only emboldened protesters, who have used bows and arrows and homemade weapons such as molotov cocktails in their ongoing battles with the police. At PolyU, police used tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets against protestors, who retaliated with violence. As the battle at the university concluded, protestors were searched by police and those who were older than 18 were arrested. According to Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, around 200 of the protestors were minors.

The recent events at PolyU resulted in the greatest number of arrests in a single day since the protests began several months ago, and many protesters received serious charges such as rioting and possession of offensive weapons

The dozen protestors who remain, many of whom are high school and university students, have said that they will neither leave the university nor surrender to police, in essence waiting for officers to enter the university and arrest them. Except for the few remaining protesters, the campus has been totally deserted, with debris littered throughout, and unused petrol bombs and pro-democracy grafitti were found on the campus. Roughly 80 people were treated for injuries at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, and around 200 people were sent to other hospitals. Protesters have set fire to bridges connecting the university to a nearby train station and have destroyed other property as well. The recent events at PolyU resulted in the greatest number of arrests in a single day since the protests began several months ago, and many protesters received serious charges such as rioting and possession of offensive weapons, which carries the threat of serious prison time, leading to reluctance on the part of protesters to surrender to police.

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Last week, protestors clashed with the police at another university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Over 3,900 Molotov Cocktails were seized at this university, and Kwok Ka-chuen, a spokesman for the police, described the university as a “manufacturing base” for these weapons. At the same time as this drama unfolded at these Hong Kong universities, a Hong Kong court overturned a ban on face masks instituted by Beijing in an attempt to curb the tremendously disruptive protests. The Hong Kong High Court found that this ban violated the constitution of the Hong Kong territory, which is called the Basic Law. The Congress has taken the unusual step of criticizing the court’s decision, saying that the finding “seriously weakened the lawful governing power” of Hong Kong’s government. While this would be an extreme step, the National People’s Congress has the authority to change the Basic Law, meaning they could institute changes that would make the face mask ban legal, potentially having broader implications for civil liberties in the territory generally.