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It's difficult to understand the aim here. This is clearly planned violence and destruction and raising a foreign colonial flag does not look like a smart thin

It's difficult to understand the aim here. This is clearly planned violence and destruction and raising a foreign colonial flag does not look like a smart thing to do. I understand that the protesters are said to be very young and may not fully understand what they are doing here.

Ultramanoid 7y ago
> One man, identifying himself as G, told the BBC protesters were ready for a backlash. "The movement is now beyond the bill," he said. "It's about the autonomy of Hong Kong."
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
You might almost think it was intended to provoke a reaction. To my most cynical take, perhaps this is CCP supporters encouraged by Beijing to provoke an "entirely necessary, but regrettable restriction of movement within Hong Kong. We had no choice".
T-A 7y ago
Agree, the optics aren't good. Worth considering: breaking into the building is reported to have taken hours, and police was apparently absent while that was going on, with TV cameras rolling. This concept may apply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
- underthebus 7y ago
  The government might have let them do it knowing how badly that would reflect on the movement. That does mean they organise it themselves, which looks far fetched. Having a single guy infiltrated to hang the flag? Maybe. However it seems it's not first time. It's a common strategy to let a protestation movement burn itself and that's why discipline and well-thought out strategy is important.
hker 7y ago
Disclosure: As a bystander, I closely followed the forum where many of the high level discussions took place: lihkg.com (in Cantonese). I did not understand the objective either, but it turned out okay I think. The breaking into the building is definitely by force, and such use of force caused serious push back among the protestors (some legislative members who support the protest tried to stop them in vein). The use of force was in part in response to the no-response from the government throughout June, and in part because of some recent desperate suicides due to no-response from government (two cases on 30 June, the day before 1 July). But I think they remained civil except for breaking into the building: they left money for the drinks in the fridge, and labeled artifacts for protection (in Cantonese [1]). Since the whole protest is largely done in a decentralized fashion, sometimes you see incoherent actions here and there. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/hksidestories/posts/2453858401312810 https://www.facebook.com/hksidestories/posts/245385840131281...
- underthebus 7y ago
  I don't see what's civil in what's happened...
  - hker 7y ago
    It is sad that the context is lost in the reporting: all foreign media reporting focused on the images of breaking in, but not what the protestors said in the chamber, nor the events that led to the 1 July protest. The protestors made a declaration [1] for their demands inside the chamber (apparently some Hong Kong media caught the declaration, see [2] in Chinese). The five demands were voiced out at least two weeks ago, and got effectively no response from the government. There were cases of desperate suicides because the government did not make any response [3], right before 1 July. Such break-in was arguably inevitable in this atmosphere, but the damage was targeted to the political figures inside the Legco building, that is, the protestors were making political statements, which did not stand out in foreign reporting. [1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FTzmq2geL58epc7-pxK591DJv8h9OLXn/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FTzmq2geL58epc7-pxK591DJv8h... [2]: https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1466090-20190701.htm https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1466090-20190701.h... [3]: https://shanghaiist.com/2019/07/01/third-suicide-by-an-anti-extradition-protestor-in-hong-kong-sparks-alarm-bells/ https://shanghaiist.com/2019/07/01/third-suicide-by-an-anti-...

Ultramanoid 7y ago

> One man, identifying himself as G, told the BBC protesters were ready for a backlash. "The movement is now beyond the bill," he said. "It's about the autonomy of Hong Kong."

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

You might almost think it was intended to provoke a reaction. To my most cynical take, perhaps this is CCP supporters encouraged by Beijing to provoke an "entirely necessary, but regrettable restriction of movement within Hong Kong. We had no choice".

T-A 7y ago

Agree, the optics aren't good. Worth considering: breaking into the building is reported to have taken hours, and police was apparently absent while that was going on, with TV cameras rolling. This concept may apply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

underthebus 7y ago
The government might have let them do it knowing how badly that would reflect on the movement. That does mean they organise it themselves, which looks far fetched. Having a single guy infiltrated to hang the flag? Maybe. However it seems it's not first time. It's a common strategy to let a protestation movement burn itself and that's why discipline and well-thought out strategy is important.

hker 7y ago

Disclosure: As a bystander, I closely followed the forum where many of the high level discussions took place: lihkg.com (in Cantonese). I did not understand the objective either, but it turned out okay I think. The breaking into the building is definitely by force, and such use of force caused serious push back among the protestors (some legislative members who support the protest tried to stop them in vein). The use of force was in part in response to the no-response from the government throughout June, and in part because of some recent desperate suicides due to no-response from government (two cases on 30 June, the day before 1 July). But I think they remained civil except for breaking into the building: they left money for the drinks in the fridge, and labeled artifacts for protection (in Cantonese [1]). Since the whole protest is largely done in a decentralized fashion, sometimes you see incoherent actions here and there. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/hksidestories/posts/2453858401312810 https://www.facebook.com/hksidestories/posts/245385840131281...

underthebus 7y ago
I don't see what's civil in what's happened...
- hker 7y ago
  It is sad that the context is lost in the reporting: all foreign media reporting focused on the images of breaking in, but not what the protestors said in the chamber, nor the events that led to the 1 July protest. The protestors made a declaration [1] for their demands inside the chamber (apparently some Hong Kong media caught the declaration, see [2] in Chinese). The five demands were voiced out at least two weeks ago, and got effectively no response from the government. There were cases of desperate suicides because the government did not make any response [3], right before 1 July. Such break-in was arguably inevitable in this atmosphere, but the damage was targeted to the political figures inside the Legco building, that is, the protestors were making political statements, which did not stand out in foreign reporting. [1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FTzmq2geL58epc7-pxK591DJv8h9OLXn/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FTzmq2geL58epc7-pxK591DJv8h... [2]: https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1466090-20190701.htm https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1466090-20190701.h... [3]: https://shanghaiist.com/2019/07/01/third-suicide-by-an-anti-extradition-protestor-in-hong-kong-sparks-alarm-bells/ https://shanghaiist.com/2019/07/01/third-suicide-by-an-anti-...