at 8 A.M. on a Sunday a line of people outside of St. Eugene de Maxenod Oblate Primary School in Kowloon City snaked past apartment buildings, breakfast shops and real estate offices. White-haired grandmothers in wheelchairs, young people staring at their cell phones, and parents holding tight to wriggly children waited for an hour to vote fro their local district councilor.
for a few days before the Nov. 24 election, Hong Kong enjoyed a rare reprieve from the often-violent protests that have characterize the city in recent months. the election was the firs since the pro-democracy protests began in the former British colony in June 2nd (?) activists took a break from demonstrations in order to ensure nothing interfered with the vote. they hoped Hong Kongers would turn out in high numbers and elect pro democracy candidates , proving voters wee sympathetic to the protesters' cause.
meanwhile, in mainland China, media referred to a 'silent majority' in Hong Hong who opposed the protesters and would surely vote for pro-Bejing candidates willing to reestablish order. according to Foreign Policy, state-run Chinese media had prepared prewritten articles lauding a win for the establishment.
when Nov. 24 arrived, polling stations around Hong Kong ... enormous turnouts: By the time they closed at 1030 p.m., a record-breaking 71% of registered voters had cast a ballot , up from 47% in 2015.
the results were even more astonishing: Pro-democracy candidates gained control of 17 of the 18 districts, winning nearly 90% of district council seats...
the results were so shocking that mainland Chinese media didn't know how to respond d, some outlets didn't mention the election results. others returned to oft-used scripts, accusing the West of swaying the election. ...communist worried that Hong Kong's democracy movement could spread elsewhere in China...
Hong Kong's democracy movement dates back in the 11980s when the city was still under British rule. before the handover in 1997, Hong Kong Gov. David Wilson introduced the first direct elections in 1991, with Hong Kong residents electing a third of their legislature. The sino-British Joint declaration promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy that would allow democracy to blossom in the city, giving the people a chance to elect their chief executive.
yet election after election China thwarted democracy's progress. in 2014, Hong Kongers grew frustrated after Beijing announced they could vote for the chief executive only if Beijing chose the candidates, leading to the 79-day Umbrella Movement. frustrations against the Beijing-backed Hong Kong government increased as it disqualified elected pro-democracy lawmakers and proposed the extradition bill that set off the current protests.
police brutality against young protesters this year, along with the Hong Kong leadership's refusal to listen to most protester demands, has brought more demonstrators into the streets and provoked more violenc3 from front-line protesters. police have arrested nearly 6,000 people.
but in the mainland, Chinese citizens hear a different narrative: Hong Kong protesters are a small, violent group seeking independence from China -= their true grievance is sky-high rent prices and a lack of affordable housing - police are the true heroes in Hong Kong, especially the officer nicknamed 'Bald Lau Sir', who became famous after pointing a shotgun at protesters.
Chinese state media paint a conspiracy of a US backed 'color' revolution meant to topple the
Chinese government. as proof, they point to meetings between Hong Kong democratic leaders and US officials, as well as to Hong Kong protesters ho wave American flags and sing the American national anthem during demonstrations.
after President Donald Trump signed the H K Human Rights and Democract Ac on Nov 27, the Chines government claimed the United states had 'clearly interfered' with the city's internal affairs. the act requires the U.S. State Department annually to assess if H K is autonomous enough to continue receiving preferential trade benefits and also requires sanctions on officials responsible for suppressing the city's freedoms.
while H K residents see the protest movement as a fight to maintain promised freedoms and to vote for their leaders, mainland Chinese instead see an anti-China movement ..protesters have violently attacked pro-Beijing supporters, including one man who protesters set on fire. images of protesters burning Chinese flags or ... flags into the harbor are also widely shared and condemned in the mainland...Yu a 38 year old banker in H K from ..China, said that Chinese censors delete from social media sites post and articles containing facts about police violence or protester motivations. but posts that focus on protester violence remain untouched. as a result, most of his friends in the mainland have bought into china's propaganda. Yu (name changed) said he was in second grade in 1989 when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to quash China's democracy movement. afterward, he and his classmates were forced to attend a class on sat afternoons about how China had been humiliated by the West and Japan and only the Chinese
Communist party was able to save China.
'that message is taught throughout your education, even when you are getting your master's degree', Yu said. 'even if you didn't want to believe it, eventually you will.
when the internet first became available ... Yu remembers having access to a wide range of information and public intellectuals often wrote freely on the web. but the Chinese govt began developing the 'Great Rirewall' in the late 1990s and now China's internet is closely censored and controlled. ..
since the protests began, state-owned H K newspapers Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po have criticized not only protesters but groups supporting them. one target: Protestant and Catholic churches have opened up their facilities to provide sanctuary for protesters.
with protests spreading to different neighborhoods in H K, churches have invited...
...former Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun has long been out spokenly supportive of democracy in HK and critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Now 87 he co-founded the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund...pays for bail, legal fees...medical aid for protesters arrested or hurt by police...Zen criticizes the Holy See's silence about the ...in Hong Kong and interprets it as an effort to appease the Chinese government. the Vatican has long sought to restore diplomatic relations with Beijing (cut off since 1951). In 2018 the Vatican and Beijing reached an agreement join how to select bishops...the goal of the deal is to bring the underground church out of hiding and unite the Catholic Church in China...Zen said, 'Thy sold our church and gained nothing in return...Pope Francis..'I respect peace...' ..but Zen dismissed such neutrality: 'In this moment, there are the persecutor and the persecuted, the strong oppressors and the weak, suffering people...we have to be on the side of the weak...
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Thursday, December 26, 2019
12.26.2019 FRONT LINE CRISIS, With U.S. troops in retreat in Syria, American aid groups step into the gap, Mindy Belz in Tel Tamer, Syria
At the 2 am. watch,gunshots aren't far away. automatic rifles trade fire in rounds that echo across the old buildings of Tel Tamer. at a compound adjoining the hospital, two watchmen with Free Burma Rangers stand guard, their faces framed between a glow of red lights coming from the emergency room and green lights of a minaret from the mosque across the way.
Unable o sleep,I join them and as whether this much shooting is normal.
'as long as the bread factory is going, we know we're OK'.
warm light and malty aromas emanate from the three story factory. the gunfire makes it impossible to forget this town of Christians, Arabs and Kurds is the front line for an ongoing assault by Turkey.
as the United States began its retreat from northeast Syria in October, these Americans moved in. Free Burma Rangers, led by Dave Eubank, is a Christian-based volunteer medic corps. in 27 days serving alongside Kurdish-led forces Northeast Syria, its team members evacuated 149 wounded and 83 dead. one of their own also was killed.Burmese medic u sen came under Turkish fire while the tea treated the wounded in November. an Iraqi translator working with the group was wounded in the same attack.
fighting in northeast Syria has fallen from headlines but hardly slowed. Turkey continues to violate terms of a cease-fire.it also breaks a separate agreement reached Oct. 22, confining military operations to a mapped buffer zone extending 1 miles into Syria from the Turkish border.
Tel Tamer sits outside that buffer zone but last month became the focus f attacks by Turkish artillery, airstrikes, and armed drones - all in airspace that remains under US control. the Kurdish-led Syria Democratic forces (SDF) has pulled back from the buffer zone but vows to fight Turkey outside it.
Tel Tamer's hospital November counted 170 dead and 600 wounded, most of them civilians. hospital director Hassa Ami said he's ever see these kids of casualties. most are wounded by airstrikes and rockets, arriving without limbs or with parts of their torsos missing.
standing by the hospital with the thud of mortar rounds in the distance, I saw 6 wounded individuals arrive by ambulance. overhead came the whine of a circling drone, unfazed by enormous plumes rising from tires set on fire to create a smokescreen.
Eubank has been making daily and nightly patrols with his team to rescue the wounded, often alongside the Kurdish Red Crescent and other overworked ambulances. overhead came the whine of a circling drone, unfazed by enormous plumes rising from tires set on fire to create a smokescreen.
Eubank has been making daily and nightly patrols with his team to rescue the wounded, often alongside the Kurdish Red Crescent and other overworked ambulances. the team has repeatedly come under fire, including from Turkish tanks. despite the effort, they've watched a humanitarian crisis grow with little outside help.
local officials say at least 150,000 people - and perhaps as many as 300,000 - have fled their homes since October. Turkish assaults on the border towns of Fas al-Ayn and Tal Abyad forced residents out and emptied surrounding villages. the locals report atrocities by forces Turkey launched into Syria starting Oct. 9, chiefly the Free Syrian Army (of Syrian National Army), an opposition force now made up of Islamic militants that fought under al-Quaeda and ISIS.
Pharmacist Rashid Sheikh Sulemon saw people burned and beheaded in Ras al-Ayn before he was forced to leave with his family. the Turkish-backed forces led men into the street, he said, tied their hands behind their backs and tortured and killed them.he volunteered for days as a medic until it became too dangerous. members of the Free Syrian Army bombed his car and set his house on fire.
'Executing individuals, pillaging property , and blocking displaced people from returning to their homes is damning evidence of why Turkey's proposed 'safe zones' will not be safe', said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.Turkey's proxy armies, she said, 'are themselves committing abuses against civilians and discriminating on ethnic grounds'.
as the crisis swelled and assaults increased,most large aid groups evacuated. caring for the displaced has fallen to local governing councils caught largely unprepared and to smaller groups nimble and brave enough to remain.
In Hadakah, local officials closed schools to convert them into shelters. they currently house about 25,000 people in 68 schools, according to Khalid Ibrahim, coordinator for the area's humanitarian affairs office.
families in the schools I visited had few provisions beyond thin mattresses and blankets. at Ibn Atheer school, a mother - afraid to give her name because her father remained in Turkish-held territory - told me her family had gone 20 days without bathing and her children had lice. a man from her village who tried to go back said the houses had been burned and pillaged. 'We have nothing to go back to, she said.
Michigan-based partners Relief and Development is working with 270 local volunteers to set up kitchen serving 2 meals per day in the schools. since October the group has prepared nearly 3 million meals. the need is 'overwhelming', said Partners President Steve Gumaer. 'We are the biggest organization here, but we are not a big organization. already we're working above capacity'.
Partners also contracted with a local factory to outfit sleeping bags with pads and water-resistant covers for those sleeping in camps.
one Iraq-based Barzani Charity Foundation, Mercy Corps and others have trucked in water and other supplies. Church officials told me that Open Doors and operation Mobilization had contributed to their efforts to care for displaced Christians. The International Red Cross and the
*43 Syrian Red Crescent distributed bedding and water to make-shift shelters. (see 'Questionable Aid' at wng.org for more on the challenges for aid groups and donors in northeast Syria).
Euband also has taken time from the front lines to make food and water distributions. displacement will continue, he said, as fighting persists and control of the region is uncertain. 'The armies are all here, he said, 'we've got Syrians, Russians, Iranians, Turks, ISIS, You name it'.
while the final fallout of Turkey's advance remains unclear, Eubank says tow decades of work in Burma prepared him for Middle East chaos. 'there, we are in a war zone on the losing side, airplanes against us, tanks against us, greatly outnumbered and with no outside help'.
The same code FREE BURMA RANGERS adoped in southeast Asia applies here:
'PRAY,
TRUST GOD,
LISTEN TO THE LOCALS
PUT YOURSELF UNDER THEIR AUTHORITY,
TELL THEM THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING,
HIDE NOTHING,
BE WILLING TO RISK EVERYTHING and
TELL THEM EVERY ASSET WE HAVE IS THEIRS'
Eubanks, 59, founded Free Burma Rangers with his wife Karen in 1997 out of backpack medical work among ethnic groups battling for survival against the military regime that renamed their country Myanmar.
the Eubanks reared 3 children-now 19, 17 and 14 years old -hiking mountains, enduring shootouts, beating tropical diseases and sleeping in bamboo huts (see 'Jungle Cowboys', March 19, 2016). the jungles of Burma defeated many a soldier in world War II, but Eubank's rangers today operate more than 90 medic teams there.
the son of American missionaries in Thailand, Eubank learned Thai before English. his mother gave up a stint on Broadway, including with Julie Andrews, to join her husband, who celebrates 60 years on the field in Thailand - and his 90th birthday - this month. Eubank served for a decade with US special operations forces and earned a theology degree from Fuller Seminary in California before launching his own organization.
Eubank says he had zero desire to work in the Middle East, but on a hike in Burma he received a text from a friend challenging him to put to work the rangers' skills in the fight against ISIS.
the group worked alongside Iraqqui Kurds in Sinjar fighting to dislodge ISIS starting in 2015 before hooking up with Iraq army units in Mosul in 2017. in northeast Syria they firs joined Kurdish-led forces outside Kobani and earlier this year at Baghuz the work included treating the enemy - ISIS fighters and their families who surrendered.
Burmese team members labor alongside retired Delta Force and other former U. S. soldiers. they raise their own support, but hardly fit the idea of a mission organization. Eubank wants to rekindle what Red Cross teams and chaplains once did in wartime. 'Our role is to be in the humanitarian gap at the front line. and right now people don't go to the humanitarian gap'.
during the battle of Mosul, Eubank said,
'We got involved because nobody could take food in.
'You'd get shot', I'd hear, and I couldn't believe it.
these families there, they're all getting shot.
Just try not to get shot'.
Eubank himself was wounded in Mosul rescuing an injured Iraqi girl. in Tel Tamer he's had narrow escapes. team members use armored vehicles and many carry weapons.
Eubank is unapologetic about bringing his family.
Syrian families face life-and-death risks all the time, he said.
Karen and their children arrived in Tel Tamer 5 weeks into the mission, helping to deliver aid kits to displaced peopled as they do everywhere they go, they hosted 'Good Live Clubs' with games and Bible stories
Inside the compound, the kids do school projects at a table where the team also eats meals and plans missions. they collect pets wherever they go, here giving a stray dog and a baby hedgehog Kurdish names.
Any Swiss Family Robinson comparisons break down, though. Eubank is a steely tactician and earns respect for his readiness to go where others refuse to. seasoned war journalists stopped in at the Tel Tamer compound for updates from Eubank, who stood before a whiteboard chronicling 6 weeks of heavy fighting. when he interrupted his own rapid-fire storytelling with spontaneous prayer, no one seemed to mind.
one of his roles in Syria, he believes, is to document what's happened since Trump launched a sudden U.S. pullout and made statements supporting the Turkish advance.
in November the rangers captured on video an attack at Ain Issa, a town also outside the buffer zone. with air-strikes and gunfire pounding the area, Eubank and his ambulance crew helped to rescue some of the 22 wounded and 5 killed, taking them to a hospital in Kobani. Eubank left to take a break from the front lines shortly after, leaving a small team of medics in place.
I was with Eubank in Tel Tamer the day President Donald Trump met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House. Trump told reporters, 'The cease fire is holding very well'. Eubank was away from the front line,supervising the medic Au Seng's cremation.
'Is this your most dangerous mission? I asked.
Yes, he said.
Then what made you come?
'It's an injury to my soul what America has done, he said, suddenly stifling emotion.
'It's like my family has hurt this family'.
Unable o sleep,I join them and as whether this much shooting is normal.
'as long as the bread factory is going, we know we're OK'.
warm light and malty aromas emanate from the three story factory. the gunfire makes it impossible to forget this town of Christians, Arabs and Kurds is the front line for an ongoing assault by Turkey.
as the United States began its retreat from northeast Syria in October, these Americans moved in. Free Burma Rangers, led by Dave Eubank, is a Christian-based volunteer medic corps. in 27 days serving alongside Kurdish-led forces Northeast Syria, its team members evacuated 149 wounded and 83 dead. one of their own also was killed.Burmese medic u sen came under Turkish fire while the tea treated the wounded in November. an Iraqi translator working with the group was wounded in the same attack.
fighting in northeast Syria has fallen from headlines but hardly slowed. Turkey continues to violate terms of a cease-fire.it also breaks a separate agreement reached Oct. 22, confining military operations to a mapped buffer zone extending 1 miles into Syria from the Turkish border.
Tel Tamer sits outside that buffer zone but last month became the focus f attacks by Turkish artillery, airstrikes, and armed drones - all in airspace that remains under US control. the Kurdish-led Syria Democratic forces (SDF) has pulled back from the buffer zone but vows to fight Turkey outside it.
Tel Tamer's hospital November counted 170 dead and 600 wounded, most of them civilians. hospital director Hassa Ami said he's ever see these kids of casualties. most are wounded by airstrikes and rockets, arriving without limbs or with parts of their torsos missing.
standing by the hospital with the thud of mortar rounds in the distance, I saw 6 wounded individuals arrive by ambulance. overhead came the whine of a circling drone, unfazed by enormous plumes rising from tires set on fire to create a smokescreen.
Eubank has been making daily and nightly patrols with his team to rescue the wounded, often alongside the Kurdish Red Crescent and other overworked ambulances. overhead came the whine of a circling drone, unfazed by enormous plumes rising from tires set on fire to create a smokescreen.
Eubank has been making daily and nightly patrols with his team to rescue the wounded, often alongside the Kurdish Red Crescent and other overworked ambulances. the team has repeatedly come under fire, including from Turkish tanks. despite the effort, they've watched a humanitarian crisis grow with little outside help.
local officials say at least 150,000 people - and perhaps as many as 300,000 - have fled their homes since October. Turkish assaults on the border towns of Fas al-Ayn and Tal Abyad forced residents out and emptied surrounding villages. the locals report atrocities by forces Turkey launched into Syria starting Oct. 9, chiefly the Free Syrian Army (of Syrian National Army), an opposition force now made up of Islamic militants that fought under al-Quaeda and ISIS.
Pharmacist Rashid Sheikh Sulemon saw people burned and beheaded in Ras al-Ayn before he was forced to leave with his family. the Turkish-backed forces led men into the street, he said, tied their hands behind their backs and tortured and killed them.he volunteered for days as a medic until it became too dangerous. members of the Free Syrian Army bombed his car and set his house on fire.
'Executing individuals, pillaging property , and blocking displaced people from returning to their homes is damning evidence of why Turkey's proposed 'safe zones' will not be safe', said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.Turkey's proxy armies, she said, 'are themselves committing abuses against civilians and discriminating on ethnic grounds'.
as the crisis swelled and assaults increased,most large aid groups evacuated. caring for the displaced has fallen to local governing councils caught largely unprepared and to smaller groups nimble and brave enough to remain.
In Hadakah, local officials closed schools to convert them into shelters. they currently house about 25,000 people in 68 schools, according to Khalid Ibrahim, coordinator for the area's humanitarian affairs office.
families in the schools I visited had few provisions beyond thin mattresses and blankets. at Ibn Atheer school, a mother - afraid to give her name because her father remained in Turkish-held territory - told me her family had gone 20 days without bathing and her children had lice. a man from her village who tried to go back said the houses had been burned and pillaged. 'We have nothing to go back to, she said.
Michigan-based partners Relief and Development is working with 270 local volunteers to set up kitchen serving 2 meals per day in the schools. since October the group has prepared nearly 3 million meals. the need is 'overwhelming', said Partners President Steve Gumaer. 'We are the biggest organization here, but we are not a big organization. already we're working above capacity'.
Partners also contracted with a local factory to outfit sleeping bags with pads and water-resistant covers for those sleeping in camps.
one Iraq-based Barzani Charity Foundation, Mercy Corps and others have trucked in water and other supplies. Church officials told me that Open Doors and operation Mobilization had contributed to their efforts to care for displaced Christians. The International Red Cross and the
*43 Syrian Red Crescent distributed bedding and water to make-shift shelters. (see 'Questionable Aid' at wng.org for more on the challenges for aid groups and donors in northeast Syria).
Euband also has taken time from the front lines to make food and water distributions. displacement will continue, he said, as fighting persists and control of the region is uncertain. 'The armies are all here, he said, 'we've got Syrians, Russians, Iranians, Turks, ISIS, You name it'.
while the final fallout of Turkey's advance remains unclear, Eubank says tow decades of work in Burma prepared him for Middle East chaos. 'there, we are in a war zone on the losing side, airplanes against us, tanks against us, greatly outnumbered and with no outside help'.
The same code FREE BURMA RANGERS adoped in southeast Asia applies here:
'PRAY,
TRUST GOD,
LISTEN TO THE LOCALS
PUT YOURSELF UNDER THEIR AUTHORITY,
TELL THEM THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING,
HIDE NOTHING,
BE WILLING TO RISK EVERYTHING and
TELL THEM EVERY ASSET WE HAVE IS THEIRS'
Eubanks, 59, founded Free Burma Rangers with his wife Karen in 1997 out of backpack medical work among ethnic groups battling for survival against the military regime that renamed their country Myanmar.
the Eubanks reared 3 children-now 19, 17 and 14 years old -hiking mountains, enduring shootouts, beating tropical diseases and sleeping in bamboo huts (see 'Jungle Cowboys', March 19, 2016). the jungles of Burma defeated many a soldier in world War II, but Eubank's rangers today operate more than 90 medic teams there.
the son of American missionaries in Thailand, Eubank learned Thai before English. his mother gave up a stint on Broadway, including with Julie Andrews, to join her husband, who celebrates 60 years on the field in Thailand - and his 90th birthday - this month. Eubank served for a decade with US special operations forces and earned a theology degree from Fuller Seminary in California before launching his own organization.
Eubank says he had zero desire to work in the Middle East, but on a hike in Burma he received a text from a friend challenging him to put to work the rangers' skills in the fight against ISIS.
the group worked alongside Iraqqui Kurds in Sinjar fighting to dislodge ISIS starting in 2015 before hooking up with Iraq army units in Mosul in 2017. in northeast Syria they firs joined Kurdish-led forces outside Kobani and earlier this year at Baghuz the work included treating the enemy - ISIS fighters and their families who surrendered.
Burmese team members labor alongside retired Delta Force and other former U. S. soldiers. they raise their own support, but hardly fit the idea of a mission organization. Eubank wants to rekindle what Red Cross teams and chaplains once did in wartime. 'Our role is to be in the humanitarian gap at the front line. and right now people don't go to the humanitarian gap'.
during the battle of Mosul, Eubank said,
'We got involved because nobody could take food in.
'You'd get shot', I'd hear, and I couldn't believe it.
these families there, they're all getting shot.
Just try not to get shot'.
Eubank himself was wounded in Mosul rescuing an injured Iraqi girl. in Tel Tamer he's had narrow escapes. team members use armored vehicles and many carry weapons.
Eubank is unapologetic about bringing his family.
Syrian families face life-and-death risks all the time, he said.
Karen and their children arrived in Tel Tamer 5 weeks into the mission, helping to deliver aid kits to displaced peopled as they do everywhere they go, they hosted 'Good Live Clubs' with games and Bible stories
Inside the compound, the kids do school projects at a table where the team also eats meals and plans missions. they collect pets wherever they go, here giving a stray dog and a baby hedgehog Kurdish names.
Any Swiss Family Robinson comparisons break down, though. Eubank is a steely tactician and earns respect for his readiness to go where others refuse to. seasoned war journalists stopped in at the Tel Tamer compound for updates from Eubank, who stood before a whiteboard chronicling 6 weeks of heavy fighting. when he interrupted his own rapid-fire storytelling with spontaneous prayer, no one seemed to mind.
one of his roles in Syria, he believes, is to document what's happened since Trump launched a sudden U.S. pullout and made statements supporting the Turkish advance.
in November the rangers captured on video an attack at Ain Issa, a town also outside the buffer zone. with air-strikes and gunfire pounding the area, Eubank and his ambulance crew helped to rescue some of the 22 wounded and 5 killed, taking them to a hospital in Kobani. Eubank left to take a break from the front lines shortly after, leaving a small team of medics in place.
I was with Eubank in Tel Tamer the day President Donald Trump met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House. Trump told reporters, 'The cease fire is holding very well'. Eubank was away from the front line,supervising the medic Au Seng's cremation.
'Is this your most dangerous mission? I asked.
Yes, he said.
Then what made you come?
'It's an injury to my soul what America has done, he said, suddenly stifling emotion.
'It's like my family has hurt this family'.
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