Hong Kong

I miss the old HK. Shout-out to everyone that managed to move out.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16412062

A high-profile British judge who resigned from Hong Kong’s highest court last week has warned the city is “slowly becoming a totalitarian state” and judges are being compromised by an “impossible political environment created by China”.

Lord Sumption’s comments on Monday came as a third senior foreign judge in the past week resigned from the Court of Final Appeal.

"The problem in Hong Kong has been building up over the last four years and I think all the judges on the court feel concerned about this," Lord Sumption told the BBC's Today programme.

"I have reached the point eventually where I don’t think that my continuing presence on the court is serving any useful purpose."

On Monday he wrote in a newspaper op-ed that the city's rule of law has been "profoundly compromised".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16128611

The verdict wasn’t surprising but outside room no 2 of the West Kowloon courthouse, people still wept. The panel of Hong Kong national security judges had set down two days for the hearing but dispensed with the core business in about 15 minutes. In the city’s largest ever national security trial – involving the prosecution of pro-democracy campaigners and activists from a group known as the “Hong Kong 47” – almost all the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion.

Their crime was trying to win an election, holding unofficial primaries in 2020 attended by an estimated 600,000 residents.

The plan was devised by organiser and academic Benny Tai, who had previously been jailed over his involvement in the 2014 “umbrella movement”, and whom Beijing has labelled a “vicious traitor”. Tai’s plan began with primaries to select the best candidates to win a legislative majority. They would then block government budgets to potentially force a dissolution and the resignation of the chief executive, Carrie Lam, in an effort to have the government answer the movement’s demands.

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/3804162

Retro Hong Kong Tram 50s-80s style

No comment, just sad to read these news

Amazing job for the government turning Hong Kong from International city to the fishing village damn

Full minutes: https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr2024/english/panels/se/papers/seajlshs5120240306cb2-258-1-e.pdf

It is kind of weird to have abandoned villages in one of the most densely populated places in the world.

I guess homesteading hasn't caught on in HK yet...

HK is far and away the #1 least affordable housing market ranked by housing cost divided by median income.

18 years of the current median income is required to buy a home in HK.

That is your entire income going towards housing for 18 years if you don't eat, use electricity, pay taxes, etc.

Not including interest on a mortgage.

Sydney Australia is in second place with 13.3 times their median income.

Vancouver, Canada is third with 12.0