An increasingly useful module in any language course would be the subject of “Hong Kong government-speak”. As any bemused and annoyed recipient of a government reply to an inquiry or representation will know, it is a truly vast subject. The repurposing of words is one aspect that has been a feature of post-handover administrations in Hong Kong. We are all familiar with “ universal suffrage ” not including selecting one’s own candidate, of “conservation” simply meaning “no development (yet)”, of “consultation” meaning “we’re telling you what’s happening”, and of “ accountability ” being now a redundant phrase as it applies to Hong Kong officials and the police. Of particular import, as we face the imposition of a national security law , is the phrase “right to protest”. Unfortunately, in Hong Kong, it does not carry the twin (and commonly assumed) concept of a “right to be listened to”. The Occupy movement in 2014 was a manifest example of the outcome of not being listened to. But the world-beating master class must surely have been the extradition bill saga, when the voices of millions of marching Hongkongers , and the measured objections of much of civil society, were largely ignored. While distilling the true meaning of government utterances has never been more important, so is understanding what happens when peoples’ manifest concerns are simply ignored. They (we) get angry, and start to do things which show our depth of feeling. These increase the longer we are suppressed. That this universal truth is either lost, or unimportant, or irrelevant to the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities is evident in the imposition of recent draconian clampdowns in Hong Kong and the imposition of a national security law. They treat the symptoms and not the illness. Clive Noffke, Lantau