Opinion | What can Carrie Lam and Beijing look forward to in 2020? (Hint: the Christmas protests are a preview)

This was Hong Kong 2019: children are charged for burning a flag or spraying protest graffiti, while grown men go unarrested for assault. Carrie Lam condemns doxxing, except when Ta Kung Pao is doing it. Who’s in the mood to celebrate a new year?

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Protesters attend a Christmas Day rally in a shopping mall in Sha Tin on December 25. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:00am, 28 Dec 2019Updated: 7:54am, 28 Dec 2019

A new year is almost upon us. It’s time to wish everyone a happy 2020. You all please go ahead. I’ll pass. To borrow a quote from Queen Elizabeth, 2019 has turned out to be an “annus horribilis” for Hong Kong. Nothing tells me the coming year will be any better.

Who wants to be the first to say “Happy New Year” to the 13-year-old girl who now has a criminal record for burning a national flag? The government threw the book at her without stopping to ask what would make such a young person join a protest. Loyalists who trampled all over an American flag during a march to the United States Consulate this month must be smirking.

They are free to desecrate an American flag in Hong Kong and even on American soil, but demand harsh punishment for anyone doing the same to a Chinese flag. There’s a word for people like them but I won’t bother because you know what it is. Let’s just feel sorry for the 13-year-old whose future is ruined.

Who wants to celebrate new year with the 12-year-old boy whom police tailed and arrested for spraying protest graffiti on a wall of Mong Kok police station in October? Compare that dedication with the action police have taken with regard to the white-shirted thugs involved in the Yuen Long attack on July 21: most of these men have yet to be arrested. But to the judge who dismissed criminal charges against the boy, I say “Happy New Year”.

And what of the more than 6,000 mostly young people arrested so far for defending your freedoms, at first peacefully, then violently, after the government ignored them? They will spend the coming months and years haunted by the likelihood of jail time. Does anyone want to wish them a happy 2020?

I will, however, say “Happy New Year” to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. Hong Kong’s undemocratically elected and most despised leader since reunification has been praised by Beijing’s top leaders for her courage to go against the will of Hongkongers. What’s not to be happy about?

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