About Hong Kong’s once-in-a-century indiscriminate attack, this book needs to be translated to gain wider circulation, for which reason I wrote its review in English.
Ryan Lau used to be a TV reporter. His style of reporting is neat, but mercilessly self-detrimental, when laying straight the facts could inflict, and had indeed inflicted pain on his part. Memories of the horrifying photo of his blood and gore are still fresh. PTSD definitely grew in him and stuck around in the process of writing, whilst he insists that through talking to other witnesses and victims he found relief. Equally unbearable is the blatant lie of heads of state and police, and injustice.
Hongkongers who have experienced police brutality firsthand can tell you that, frontline police officers held grudges. The many occasions of inaction on 21 July speak a lot. What keeps pushing people to the edges is the state propaganda machine. Not stated in the book, many “alternative facts”—fake news—are propagated by local officials, CCP mouthpieces, and even a (supposedly) independent watchdog’s report. Some may be privy, some not; all are complicit. The most rigged aspect of our “judiciary” reveals in the indictment of seven victims in August 2020, followed by an address by Carrie Lam that Hong Kong has never had separation of powers—implying collusion. Can you believe it? An unashamed scheme of whitewash is turning victims to villains.
This incident is in dire need to be heard by the world. No justice without remembrance. The unpopular government here has a habit of dismissing international concern as “foreign interference”. They are the very culprit of meddling the societal harmony, and the road to justice.
An excellent first hand account of the 2019 Yuen Long attack. Reading this book gives me vivid flashbacks of the scenes from the live broadcast of the night. Hong Kong needs more such historical publications in the face of CCP's censorship and history rewriting.