[JohnnyB]

The police in HK is no longer just the HK police. Back in the summer China brought in another several thousand troops to the PLA barracks in downtown HK. They said it was just the regular annual rotation of troops in and out of HK, but the troops being rotated out never seemed to leave. During the protests there has since been increasing video evidence suggesting that Chinese military troops are dressed as HK police force to participate in crack downs.

Yesterday, the PLA openly came out of the barracks. They jogged around with a camera man following them as they went through a small crowd cheering for them, then proceeded to clean up some bricks left scattered on streets by protesters. A superficially positive gesture, but also an open violation of the law that will be seen as a threat and a step towards an open military crackdown.

The crackdowns on university campuses is also a significant escalation. The universities are the centers of free thought in HK. The first night of crackdowns at CUHK featured around 2,000 canisters of tear gas being fired.

At the same time, there have been increasing numbers of arrested protesters going missing and more and more young people ending up dead having fallen from tall buildings. Recently, protesters have taken to shouting out their names when being arrested so that their names can be recorded by journalists capturing the protests and so lawyers can try to track them after arrest. Numerous videos also show police covering their mouths and trying to block them shouting out during arrests.

The Chinese state media is also using increasingly harsh language for protesters, such as graphics and videos that refer to HK protesters as cockroaches and as garbage. They also continue to blame the protests on the US, saying it's just foreign influencers causing the trouble while HK people support the police.

There is zero trust in the police at this time in HK and no political solutions being worked on by the government. Even those demands that should not be difficult to meet have been ignored and the police, who are notably not politicians and don't have the tools to solve political issues, are the ones being left to deal with the public.

I don't support the violence in HK. Nonetheless, it's worth remembering that when this started a few months ago two million people took peacefully to the street, in a city of just 7+ million. The response was to leave the police to deal with the situation.

It is an outright disaster for everyone in HK. It's also an open refusal to recognize international agreement regarding the handover of HK and is an expression to everyone regionally that their Western alliances can't be counted on.