Big White Lies

By Rei Tanotsuka, 6 September 2019

It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed – Nietzsche

If a crystal ball was to be given to the first batch of Chinese migrants to Hong Kong Island, they would surely jest that it is impossible, for the then undeveloped fishing village and salt mine site, to one day become the pearl of the Orient.

What would leave them utterly flabbergasted, would be seeing their posterity, chanting for the return of a group of people who kept them in legal bonds and moral subjugation through a racial hierarchy spawned from the xenophobic philosophy of the West. The scar of cultural segregation between kin to kin, that would one day see the Chinese vivisect their own brother for the pleasure of their former colonial owners to witness.

Bond out of hate

The thing that flummoxes me, are the demands made by the benighted Hong Kongers in the recent spate of riots, pleading for the return of the British to provide ‘justice’ for them – the very people who bestowed them with the biggest bout of inequality and injustice!

Do people enjoy cultural masochism?

Hong Kong was known as the ‘the sad mistake committed by Sir Henry Pottinger in choosing for a British Settlement an island as barren as Hong Kong’. Crime and its Punishment in Victorian Hong Kong

The British bemoaned that the Chinese who came to the colony were ‘the refuse of the [Chinese] population’. Other more poetic Brits, noted that the island backdrop was reflective of its inhabitants, that of a greenish hue akin to decayed Stilton cheese and taking on ‘the appearance of a negro streaked with leprosy’. You gotta love metaphors…….

The hebetudinous plea for the return of a Whip Master that didn’t give 2 Fs!

Occupy 2.0, which I will assign the moniker of ‘Carrie’s Deadly Withdrawal’ (CDW), is a fumigation of the deep seated rot, that has engulfed Hong Kong society from 1997.

Nothing about these riots smell like indignation of political or social oppression of a citizen body that enjoys more press freedom than all the Western nations, but an inequitable economic tirade, which Washington has leveraged to its advantage to kneecap China’s economic ascension. This is not only courtesy of American influence ostentatiously displayed on the NED site, but for the flagrant showcasing of a double standard that unequivocally attests, that to be treated like dirt by the British, is always favoured more than equitable treatment by China.

Extradition Bill! It’s SO UNFAIR!!!

To bypass the notion, that the rebellion against CDW is completely divorced from Sinophobia, we would have to establish that crime and punishment under British rule was equitable and just. So we must, once again, take a stroll down memory lane and see if we can hold a candle to the claims that the British were a paragon of moral virtue in dispensing appropriate punishments to Hong Kong people.

The first set of criminal activity records were collected between 1873 – 1882.

A report known as ‘Notification No. 83 – Police Returns’, spells out what constitutes a Serious Offence and a Minor Offence.

Minor Offences include: Assault, Gambling, Drunkenness, Nuisances, Miscellaneous and No pass or light. To see the details of the pass and light offence, click here.

Guess what the bulk of the offences were? Between 1873 – 1877, 1007 people were arrested for NOT CARRYING a light and pass paper after 11pm!!! That sounds about right…… If you are INSANE!! Why do the local Hong Kong people EVEN need a pass to wander around their OWN COUNTRY in the dusk?? Talk about authoritarian! Oh, we can’t make that lamentation unless it’s enforced by China. My bad!

‘Notification N°52‘ lay out the statistics of prisoners in the Victoria Gaol for 1882 only. The incarceration rate was surprisingly fair, with the Chinese making up 97% and Europeans 3% of the prison population. The population in 1865 in Hong Kong was 126,000, with 97% being Chinese people.

Queue Cutting…….. No, not at Disney Land!!

I know not all men can rock a pony tail, but that’s besides the point.

Due to some paperwork issues, resulting in a lag between the settlement of Hong Kong and obtaining the legal title, Ordinance 10 was enacted in 1844 (repealed in 1875). This is when ALL KINDS OF pandemonium took place. Imagine judging Chinese offenders, based on English law AND punishing them using Chinese Law…..did I mention Captain William Caine???

Captain Caine, the first Chief Magistrate in Hong Kong, was basically a Chinese person’s walking nightmare – a megalomaniac with a lash and noose, coming in all shades of stupid!

The argument goes, that the culturally uncouth Chinese, rendered illiterate the punitive measures of ‘normal’ English punishments and hence Chinese offenders were to be subjected to the laws in China, BUT administered with the wrath of the Englishmen! Lucifer could not have rigged a more favourable system!

One punishment was queue cutting, the long pony tail that Chinese men used to sport. Queue cutting was not administered in Chinese law AT ALL, the Brits just winged it, and due to its expediency in inducing shame on the criminals, they continued the practice even though it was not sanctioned.

But back to Captain Caine! Flogging!

These were public floggings, where the Chinese offenders wore a Chinese character label on his back, and received anywhere from 20 to 100 lashings at the Upper Bazaar. By 1845, public outcry about the disgusting exhibitions were coming thick and fast. Why? Because it became a daily ritual for the most benign offences! The Brits were just getting a sadistic kick out of this. The weapon of choice? The rattan, a bamboo stick.

Do you know why I keep reiterating that Hong Kong rioters are bona fide morons? Because the British never cared for her yellow children. It was ALWAYS a persistent double standard at play. Flogging in England was already abolished in 1861 but it continued in the same salubrious manner in Hong kong .

Guess why they even temporarily stopped it in Hong Kong? In 1865, the first European was sentenced to a public flogging, suddenly the gung ho pro flogging Europeans had a change of heart. Charity begins at home……and never extends out to any thing with melanin.

How long did this last? Until THAT European was accounted for. After that? The flogging continued with the Chinese!

“I am bound to state [wrote Chief Justice Snowden in 1877] that although I have ever considered the punishment brutal, and brutalising, unfit for a large, high-grade, civilised community, practical results have brought me, most unwillingly, to the conviction, that for a country where the criminal classes are far less humanised, flogging is practically useful.” Crime and its Punishment in Victorian Hong Kong

“Public floggings often attracted a great number of Chinese and a few Europeans, while in some cases no medical officers were present. Wednesday was flogging day, and crowds would congregate in the square opposite the Harbour Master’s office to witness the lash being applied to prisoners.” A paradise for rascals.

But….I’m not cattle!!! Didn’t you say you like branded stuff?

The 4 main non-custodial sentences were: mutilation, the pillory, the stock and branding. ……you mean as in hot iron branding? Yep, that’s exactly what I mean!

Branding was introduced to Hong Kong in 1845 through Ordinance No.1 and ostensibly to be dispensed only to hard criminals like the Triad members……except they jettisoned the last part, and said ‘ah what the heck, let’s be DEMOCRATIC and give it to every one of those damn yellow imbeciles! After all, we can tell their white worshipping offspring, we gave them universal suffrage and equality, it’s not like anyone checks the shit White people say…….’ Ok, they didn’t say that, but you get the drift……They branded Chinese people for 2 decades by the way.

As for modern day inequality, here are some incidences for you to mark down:

The Bill of Rights guaranteeing basic rights for each Hong Kong citizen didn’t get passed until 1991.

By the time Chris Patten left, Hong Kong still did not receive universal suffrage. The historical struggles to obtain suffrage were all shot down by the Brits.

Protesters were black listed. This is implicit, every one in Hong Kong knew this.

Under colonisation, the Governor position was not chosen by Hong Kong people but by the Brits, yet NO ONE had a bone to pick then. Now that the CE is appointed by Beijing, suddenly we are going to ring the bell of OPPRESSION?

All heads of departments were British including the Army Chief.

The British have sole authority to enact any laws without anyone making a squeak.

Despite prostituting Hong Kong like her million dollar baby, Britain never once bothered to create a sustainable social welfare system, especially with the senior citizens. The pension currently supplied is grossly inadequate, with a monthly pension of $1400 against an average cost of living at $6000.

Keeping taxation rates excruciatingly low to entice foreign and local investment, while privatising government welfare systems, in essence keeping the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Blocking every attempt for centralised planning for homes by keeping land prices inflated, hording empty apartments and now hindering Carrie Lam’s Vacancy tax bill by trying to boot her out of her CE post.