HONG KONG: Ronald sacrificed his lunchtime to join the protest in a Hong Kong park. He quivered at the prospect of communing with hundreds of like-minded office workers stirred by the organizers’ rallying cry, “Revolution is a duty!” He was on time. He was wearing a new black face mask. He was fired up. He was ready.
He was also utterly alone.
Confused, shocked and more than a little sad as he gazed unbelieving around the empty park with a grand total of exactly one protester — him — the office intern drew this conclusion: Hong Kong’s establishment-shaking protest movement, which has plunged the international business hub into crisis and seemed to have boundless reserves of determination, energy, creativity and popular support, might finally be losing a little steam as it enters its fifth month.
“No one showed up! Only me! Wearing a mask to show off! This is quite disappointing,” said the 20-year-old.
Ronald wouldn’t give his surname. Not because he was afraid to, he insisted, but to spare any embarrassment for friends who might read somewhere that he’d answered the call to rally Wednesday lunchtime amid the skyscrapers of Hong Kong’s central business district and feel ashamed they’d not made the effort to join him.
Ronald said another protest he’d attended the previous evening, in the more residential Tsuen Wan district, was almost as much of a let-down: It drew just five participants.
“People are losing their passion,” he said. “At the start of the protests ... hundreds of people would show up, even if they are working.”
The coming days will tell whether Ronald’s suspicions are accurate. If this weekend doesn’t again draw out the number of demonstrators seen as recently as Sunday, it could be a signal that protesters are growing tired, divided and becoming less of a challenge to the government of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory and its masters in Beijing.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, will draw further encouragement if a quiet weekend is then followed by her not being besieged by demonstrators when she delivers an annual policy address on Wednesday.
But that is a lot of ifs.
Given that Lam isn’t expected to announcean amnesty for arrested protesters or use her speech to bow to the movement’s other key demands, she’s still a long way from assuaging the fury that has turned Hong Kong into a powder keg.
And with Lam not budging on protesters’ clamors for universal suffrage, an investigation of heavy-handed policing and other demands, any lull is likely to be temporary. The youth-led movement has radicalized a new generation of protesters unlikely to go readily back into their box. Nearly one-third of the 2,379 people arrested since June are under 18 and 104 of them are under 16, the government says.
From the same park where Ronald had found himself alone Wednesday, about 1,000 protesters chanting “Fight for freedom!” marched peacefully in a circle through the business district for about 40 minutes Friday lunchtime before disbanding. Many were office workers, and many wore face masks in violation of the week-old ban. Police did not intervene.
Fears that Hong Kong is slowly losing its freedoms and is on course to become a tightly controlled city like all the others in China are widely shared and cross-generational. Protesting, from wearing black and spraying graffiti to occasional outbursts of street violence, is becoming Hong Kong’s new norm, gradually engraining in its habits like shopping, snacking and the lighting of incense sticks as offerings.
As Ronald turned tail and trudged back to work, 500 meters (yards) away outside the High Court, 300 masked protesters chanting “Revolution Now!” and there to support an activist appealing his six-year prison sentence showed that even if the movement is indeed flagging, it is far from snuffed out.
“People can’t protest every day,” said Roy Tse, among the demonstrators who held five fingers aloft to symbolize the movement’s five key demands. “If you protest every day, you lose your creativity.”
“No one showed up!” Hong Kong’s protests face acid test
“No one showed up!” Hong Kong’s protests face acid test
- The man said he was the only one who shoed up to the park for protests
- An earlier protest he attended also drew only 5 participants
Trump urges Iranian Kurds to attack Iran as war widens
- Azerbaijan preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday
- The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel on Friday said it had started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country’s military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
Azerbaijan prepares to retaliate
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbor.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border between the countries in a message posted on its Telegram channel in Hebrew early on Friday.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
Us munitions full
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing about operations that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The Pentagon earlier this week said the military campaign, known as Operation Epic Fury, is focused on destroying Iran’s offensive missiles, missile production and navy, while not allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier.
He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran’s missile production facilities.
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90 percent since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83 percent in that time frame, he said. In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
