Letters from Inside Hong Kong

[ellisonz]

First this is amazing journalism:

DECEMBER 30, 2022 • LETTERS
Letters from Inside Hong Kong
Eunsong Kim

From well-studied psychologists to fitness influencers we hear repeated iterations of: language is power, so be careful how you speak. Thus, relationship coaches advise creating google docs full of goals and reading it to yourself every morning while your unconscious is most impressionable. This way you can train your unconscious to believe that you can own Architectural Digest-esque property, and make so much money you’re not sure what to buy anymore, and the ego of your dreams will love you and only you. The example documents include stock images full of white furniture so it is advised to cut and paste endlessly.

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Dear Professor Kim,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I was convicted in July last year and was sent to the prison for five years imprisonment. I’ve been in prison for almost a year already.

I wasn’t too surprised about the result. Hundreds of teenagers were sent to the prison already. But I still think it’s surreal and unbelievable. The judge said that I was guilty for mere presence, inside my university, in the middle of a protest (riot, as they’ve said). In these 2-3 years, people were convicted because of words or articles they wrote, pictures they drew, comments they posted on the internet, disagreements towards the police, cop or HK government. Five speech therapists were sent to the prison because of the children books they created. A priest was arrested because he shouted “Is this what you call justice?” in the court, a musician was sued because of the song he played in public places. Oh! And three poets’ new works were removed from the public libraries, banned and disqualified from a HK literature award.

[link:https://offshootjournal.org/lettersfromhk/|

Scroll down past the analysis to get to the letter portion alone. And here's my semi-worthy response:https://open.substack.com/pub/zacharyellison/p/part-6-a-letter-to-tz-sent-from-los?r=1symt8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web