Blackbird: A howl of protest from Hong Kong anarchists

From Freedom News UK

In Hong Kong, recent events such as the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Protests represent young Hong Kongers’ will to protect their freedoms — but during the 1980s and 1990s, the indie band Blackbird (黑鳥) offered a much more radical proposition. Influenced by the student movements in 1968, this group of Hong Kong anarchists and libertarians were actively working together to respond to public issues such as colonial politics, capitalist economy, the establishment, people’s unfreedoms and Communist China.

CCF/Nemesis Action claims arson

Yogyakarta, Indonesia: ‘CCF / Nemesis Action’ take responsibility for the arson of a luxury car

Yogyakarta – Indonesia : We claim the burning of a luxury car in front of the Sinar Mas office last night on Ring Road Utara Yogyakarta. And it’s not just solidarity for combatants on the streets against the Omnibus Law.

Spread This Freely: JN On HK Under National Security Law

From The Final Straw Radio

This week, I speak with JN, an anarchist who works with the decolonial, leftist HongKonger platform, Lausan, talks about where the uprising against Chinese integration in Hong Kong stands, the National Security Law, tankie and rightwing narratives and international anti-authoritarian solidarity and resistance.

Remolding Hong Kong: A View from the Mainland

From 闯 Chuǎng

For several months starting late January, the Covid-19 Pandemic seemed to have demobilized the mass movement in Hong Kong, in any case pushing it off the radar of global news. Over the past few weeks, however, the Special Autonomous Region’s unresolved conflict has again begun to heat up, with fifteen prominent anti-Beijing (“pan-democracy”) politicians being arrested on April 18 for “organising and participating in unlawful assemblies,” and the revival of city-wide protests, including one on May 10 ending in over 200 arrests, the firing of a pepper ball round in a shopping center, and the police strangling of a journalist caught up in the melee (one among multiple recent police assaults on journalists). On May 12, “Ms. X,” the teenager who had accused Hong Kong police of gang-raping her in detention after a round-up of protestors last September, learned that the state had now issued a warrant for her arrest on the charge “making a false statement” and “absconding” to Taiwan, and that the Department of Justice had dropped her case against the police. Meanwhile in the Legislative Council, a number of controversial measures have been pursued by pro-Beijing officials, including a 25 percent increase to the police budget, passed on May 14, for the force to add 2,500 officers and purchase more weapons. The next day saw the first in what is expected to become a flood of trials for participants in last year’s protests, with 21-year-old lifeguard Sin Ka-ho being sentenced to four years in prison for “rioting.” Most importantly, Beijing’s “Two Sessions” are currently pushing to impose national security legislation that, opponents argue, would effectively incorporate Hong Kong into China’s political structure, prematurely ending the era of “one country, two systems.”

The Divided God

From Chuang

A Letter to Hong Kong

Since the Arab Spring in 2011, the world has been riven by abrupt tectonic shifts in the landscape of political potential. The certainty that once embroidered every discussion of the global economy has, after a decade of crisis, become a laughable afterthought. In retrospect, we might argue that the “Rebirth of History” began in Algeria or Egypt, but now history is beginning to shake loose even in the wealthy countries, beneath the sprawling, shining cities built on decades of speculation. Places once considered stable ground—requiring little more than periodic tending by the technocratic management of central banks and think tanks—have now shown themselves to be founded on fault lines.

Summer in Smoke

The frontlines are organized anonymously. People pay cash for SIM cards to register temporary phone numbers on encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, where individuals sign up for tasks like building barricades or disabling traffic lights. In contrast to black blocs in America, where affinity groups are based around trusted friendship networks, nobody on the frontlines in Hong Kong knows each other outside the protests.

The Arrow Loosed from Hong Kong

The four-month old insurrection in Hong Kong is generating a new politics. No-one can say clearly what the outcome of this conflict will be. But even if what lies ahead is a tragedy or a farce, the significance of what created it can’t be lost. What’s happening in Hong Kong is a “revolution,” its glory is in the revolution itself.

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