Poll Dancer by Keith Ng

Just a quick update from the Eastern Front. All my photos from Tuesday are up here, as well as some excellent shots from Sam Graham, a local journalism student.

The past two days has been more of the same: Wheeling and dealing inside the conference, scuffling and swimming outside.

Local media has been giving a lot of coverage to the proto-violence. And fair enough - it's not everyday that you have a week-long mini-riot in Hong Kong.

Jane Kelsey writes that "some local activists believed the TV station was deliberately sensationalizing its reports, making the tussle appear more like a war situation. Its anchorman was wearing a helmet in all his reports."

I think she means reporter (yes, having an anchorman in the studio wearing a riot helmet would be pretty silly), and it was quite justified, actually. All sorts of shit was being thrown around, mace was being sprayed everywhere, there were nails on the ground (as in hundreds of nails, scattered like they were dropped - what were they for? Not home improvement...)

Okay, it wasn't genuinely life-threatening, but it was certainly unsafe enough to warrant wearing a helmet, just in case it started raining mace.

Kelsey also wrote that the Korean contingent are "relaxed, but strictly self-disciplined, they exuded an aura that is hard to describe."

I've got a description: Militant.

It's not that they don't have a good cause, it's not even that I disagree with their tactics (I'm ambivalent at this stage). But let's be honest - the "direct action" arm of the group, they are not interested in peaceful, lawful protests. These guys are here with the specific intention of taking on the authorities (aka Law).

They know what they are doing. They are well-trained, disciplined, organised and determined. As much as these are Confusian virtues, they do not endear the protesters to the Hong Kong authorities.

They're certainly not marauding hooligans, and I doubt they're any threat to the public in general, but they are here to challenge the authorities, and the police, as the whacking-end of the authorities, can't really be expected to let them run amok.

And they haven't done a bad job with it. Sure, they've prepared like an obessive-compulsive Martha Stewart getting ready to have the Hordes over for dinner, but despite the ungodly amount of whacking-power they've allocated for this meeting, their use of it so far has been, indeed, measured and restrained.

I mean, pepper-spray really is the minimal level of force at their disposal, unless you count shouting menacingly. They had, ready to go, guys with tear gas, rubber bullets, big, fuck-off truncheons and full body armour, all sitting right there, metres away.

They were restrained.

Apparently, the protesters were, too. Local media are reporting, somewhat speculatively, that these clashes are just warm-up exercises, designed to test the police response. In fact, they even speculated that the swimmers and the funeral pyre were timed to test the ability of the police's ability to deal with multiple simultaneous events.

Both the local media and "police sources" are speculating that the protesters will disperse into the city and take the action there, in an attempt to stretch the police force to its limits. No doubt the police have long identified the key players and are keeping close tabs on them already.

In local slang, everyone is still waiting for "kick-off". We'll see if the fear-mongering was warranted...

Self-fulfilling or otherwise, the predictions for the Korean delegation turned out to be true, with an active contingent of them taking on the riot police and getting confettied with mace, while a flotilla of them made a seaborne protest - that's seaborne, sans boat.

The financial hub of Hong Kong was a ghost-town today, with a lot of shops far from the action closed and boarded up. It was quite pleasant, actually, to be able to get a bit of peace and quiet.

Except for the thousands of cops. Thousands. There were cops around every corner, and a few dozen on every bridge or checkpoint.

They had patrols guarding the parking lot, which was surrounded by a protective wall of containers, covered with children's artwork. There were plainclothes cops, innocuously standing around in pairs, checking everyone out and looking unusually patient with whoever they were pretending to be waiting for. Then there were the police interceptors speedboats. And the police divers. And cops on motorcycles patrolling the area. And the vans full of reinforcements. And the helicopter.

They even had their own Mobile Canteen Unit. Now that's prepared.

The protesters were very multicultural. A very visible, well-organised and vocal Korean contingent was divided into teams with matching clothing, bandannas and banners. A group of them carried around a large funeral pyre that foreshadowed things to come.

The Filipino group had their own WTO coffin, too. The Filipino and Indonesian contingents were quite strong - Hong Kong is home to many sojourners from these countries who work as domestic servants in ordinary, middle-class households. It's very strange from a social organisation perspective, having ordinary households include a maid, but from an economic perspective, outsourcing labour-intensive tasks to cheap labour makes perfect sense.

Of the locals, there were lots of unionists, as well as some good old-fashioned socialists who - true to their motto - really do seem the same everywhere. There were also generic anti-Americans and anti-Bush protesters with good-looking placards.

There was the Falun Gong, who have their fingers in many protest pies these days. They've become quite overtly... seditious, too. But then again, I guess I can't rule out the possibility that these signs are all Chinese black-ops.

The protesters played Power to the People on repeat for ages, and chanted exciting slogans such as "down down WTO", "no no WTO" and "[in Cantonese] protest WTO".

A lot of marching, with a lot of people watching and taking photos. In Hong Kong, every man and his dog is a photography enthusiast packing a professional-grade camera. Everyone else just has a digital camera or a cellphone with a camera. It's hard to get a shot without someone in it who's trying to get a shot, too. Some good shots to be had, but the enthusiasts and the international press had to jostle quite a bit. As with everything else in Hong Kong, the solution was to develop vertically.

Before long, a whole bunch of Koreans took off their shoes, put on life-jackets and jumped into the sea. More followed. Then some more. They said they were going to swim to the convention centre and stop the meeting. They didn't manage to do it, but they looked like they were having a reasonably good time, nonetheless. Presumably, nobody told them about the horrendous levels of pollution in that harbour...

There was a period of monotonous chanting and dull speeches. It might have been good that nobody paid much attention to what was being said, since half the people were arguing for reduced agricultural subsidies and "fair trade", while the other half were arguing for an end to global capitalism. Presumably, the farmers wanting to sell their goods at a real market price might have been a bit peeved to have no market to sell to.

Before such minor details could be explored, the large funeral pyre carried by one of the Korean groups got turned into a flaming battering ram. Well, okay, it was smouldering rather than properly flaming, and it was flipped onto, rather than rammed into, police. Still - funeral pyre, burning - you would have thought someone would have made the connection earlier.

A few attempts were made to charge the police line. One of the Korean groups again. A very organised (and obviously dedicated) group formed a mini-phalanx and tried to break through. The police responded with a confetti-rain of mace (it looks like puke).

Other people gave it a go, too. These smug pricks (the usual suspects out for a good time) gave each other high-fives after managing to run the gauntlet without getting maced.

Another casualty was one of Hong Kong's legislators, known as "Long-Hair". Famed for wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and representing the too-cool-for-skool constituency, he copped some mace-in-da-face, too.

While the protesters and police were charging and macing, on the other side of the fence, the rest of the protesters (around 60-70% of them) went about their chants and stuff as before.

Most of the local press (and only the local press) brought riot helmets with them. I was initially skeptical, but as the action began, I got very, very jealous. I ended up hanging on a fence for over an hour. Highlight: Changing camera lenses with one hand while two metres above angry mob and riot police. Lowlight: The diesel generator next to me being designed to vent its exhaust fumes about two metres from ground level, away from people. And my really, really sore back.

A lot of other journalists, though, were down there in the thick of it. There was this amazing cloud of cameras that hovered over the action. When the action died down, the front-line was filled with so many cameramen that it took some time for everyone to realise that the nobody was there confronting the police anymore. Seriously.

Then, in what's definitely the most surreal twist, people started taking souvenir photos. The riot police that were whipping out the mace like it was a pissing contest suddenly became static backdrops for people to pose in front of for I-came-to-the-WTO-and-all-I-got-was-this-lousy-photo photos. People were chatting, and just hanging out. The tense stand-off suddenly became light-hearted, mostly contrived adventure-tourism.

I love military and police equipment. They're just so... thoughtful.

Take this Australian made "water barrier". It's a big plastic water container. Easy to move into place, just add water. Sturdy as a concrete block, slippery as a greasy pole. Can't push it over, can't climb it. I mean, if *I* was looking to purchase a two-metre high redeployable crowd control barrier, *I'd* get one of these.

But it's not just the equipment, but the service that goes with it, too. Those security consultants they've got over for the WTO must be wedding planners, too, considering their attention to detail. Bridges are wrapped in netting to prevent protesters from accidentally dropping their belongings over the sides; drain covers are locked into place with metal ties to prevent protesters from... er... accidentally taking them away and breaking windows with them; they've even filled the edges around paving stones to prevent them from being plied out.

They've made Hong Kong kid-safe.

Meanwhile, businesses near the convention centre (that would be the heart of the busiest part of Hong Kong) are bracing themselves for massive disruptions. A lot of the staff are being asked to go on leave, with the best-case scenario being major traffic rerouting (except that in Hong Kong, there isn't really anywhere to reroute to), and the worst case scenario being the closing of the harbour crossing, which would cut Hong Kong in half and piss, oh, several million people off immensely.

Hotel staff hosting the foreign dignitaries are drilling for Contingency Plans A, B and C - though I'm not sure if the staff themselves actually get away, or whether they're expected to make the noble sacrifice for the good of global commerce. I hear they have been issued with Tasers, though.

They're expecting a large contingent of Korean unionists (now *they* know how to rip some mad shit up), representatives of other not-quite-cheap-enough Asian labour, as well as the usual suspects here for a good time with a pickax, bolt-cutter and crowbar.

They've created a protest zone just 200m from where I live, so it should get interesting. It has line of sight with the convention centre, albeit with a rather large body of water in between. It's also possibly the last remaining piece of undeveloped land in Hong Kong.

Last time I came back to Hong Kong they had a Russian circus in the same spot. Clown-music. All day. Every day.

I'm looking forward to next week.

(Update: The photos are up here now.)

Hong Kong's 'Honkies' aren't really known as
the ripping-some-mad-shit-up type. But they try.

Around 100,000-200,000 of them took to the streets today in a massive demonstration to protest against plans by the Government to slow down democratic reforms in Hong Kong, perhaps indefinitely.

Ahem. Except not quite so confrontational. It was more a... widely attended march "aimed at expressing discontentment over the government's package proposals for Hong Kong's constitutional development".

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I'm reporting from Public Address' newly established Hong Kong Bureau. (I bagsed Bureau Chief.) It's been quite a bit of work, but the bureau is now mostly functional, though the case fan is a bit noisy and the DVD-RAM is bung. But it's got a 10mb connection and unlimited traffic...

I thought only kids with daddies who owned telcos had connections like this, but no, this is just what people have over here. It's funny, coming to a place with fiber-optics blasting ultra-speed internet out the wazoo, trying to explain to people how "broadband" at home means a pale, woeful 256k imitation of the real thing.

When will we get the big-people internet?

Maybe tomorrow.

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The issue at hand is that the Hong Kong Chief Executive - the Head of Government - is not directly elected. Rather, the top job is appointed by a 800-member committee, which itself is directly elected by a small number of people in "Functional Constituencies".

Check it out - it's complicated, it's tedious, it's diabolically legalicious.

It's Socialism with Byzantine Characteristics.

The general idea was that Hong Kong needed time to develop the civic vigour required to have real elections. You know, like, breed more bloggers and stuff. By 2007, 10 years after Britain handed Hong Kong back to China, the time would be ripe to move to universal suffrage. Or it might be 'move *towards* universal suffrage'. One or the other.

Cue lawyers.

Rather than universal suffrage, the Government is trying to expand the indirect election system so that more people get to kinda vote. The idea of universal suffrage is still good, but Hong Kong is just going to have to wait.

Having waited 10 years, people in Hong Kong are, shall we say, somewhat disinclined to wait until the Communist Party decides to hold an election for them.

Cue polite Sunday march.

There were a lot of old people and families with <a target="_blank" href="small children - they certainly weren't an excitable lot. In fact, a lot of it got out-right boring. They kept doing shit like obeying police instructions and "maintaining orderly behaviour", which was a bit disheartening.

It sounds strange, but the slogans were spectacular. Everyone had copies of a local (and evidently liberal) newspaper, Apple Daily, which did a double-page broadsheet spread that could be used as a placard. On it: "I want to see an election." But the meaning was not just see, in the sense of "I want this to happen", but in the sense of "I want to witness it finally happen", "I want to see this part of history through".

The sticker on this guy puts it in terms easier to translate. It says:

"Tell me, will I see the day when we have universal suffrage?"

It's snappier in Chinese, but the idea of dashed hope was very powerful. On one hand, it's expressing their own democratic aspirations and how important they are; on the other, they're asking the Chinese Government to quit the bullshit and tell them whether it'll *ever* happen.

Maybe tomorrow.

At the Auckland University symposium on Asians and the Treaty, it was noted that Asians have a great reverence for the written word, and therefore for laws and treaties.

I started out my presentation by saying that, well, I don't.

It sums up my beef about the current Treaty discourse - that a discussion about people has descended into a debate about law, that the creation of a nationhood has descended into the dissection of an old treaty.

It's not that laws are useless; they have their place, but their place is as a last resort, especially when it comes to human interaction. When one person calls upon the law in their interaction with another, that's generally a sign that all normal avenues - communication, persuasion, negotiation - have failed, and failed spectacularly.

When the lawyers arrive, it's already custard.

Law is coercion. It's a mechanism to wield the force of the state to make someone do something they don't want to (or the other way around). This holds true even for contracts willingly signed. If things go according to plan, then both parties want to be there, want to go through with it, and the powers of the contract never have to be invoked. It's when things go wrong - or if the original deal was bad - that the contract gets waved around.

You can use laws to get what you want, but they rarely improve the relationship afterwards.

Maori have genuine needs, real grievances, but what the current discourse does is say that addressing those needs and grievances is the price the Crown has to pay to be in this country, and that they're contractually obligated to pay this price because it's their signature on the Treaty.

It's a nasty way of doing things because it looks at what each side can force the other side to do rather than recognise there is really a whole lot of common ground. An entire country's worth of common ground, in fact.

We want to ensure the empowerment of minorities. Whether it's out of a sense of social justice or out of a fear of social unrest, we recognise that we want everyone to feel empowered. If particular minorities are unable to effectively participate, then we need to provide them the avenues to do so.

Poverty bad. Sick people bad. We want to help those who are not doing well. It's the outcome that matters, however we get there.

Both the Courts and the Waitangi Tribunal have determined that "the principle of partnership includes the obligation on both parties to act reasonably, honourably and in good faith". How about we just agree that it's not in anyone's interest to be a big fat asshole?

We are living together. We will be living together. It's like a marriage from which you can't get divorced - now that's an incentive to talk.

My point is that a partnership is forged out of common interests. Those common interests are there. Using the Treaty as a legal basis for partnership takes us further away from it.

I appreciate that many of the leaders in the Maori community grew up in a hostile era when they were only able to make gains through the power that came with the Treaty. But this power is unsustainable, and now is the time to use the momentum to drive the process to safer ground - one built on people *wanting* to work together.

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Towards the end of the symposium, an old Maori woman told us we (Asians) needn't worry about our rights, because we were guests in this country, and as guests, Maori would treat us well, though we need to respect their place as tangata whenua.

I replied that we weren't guests - we were citizens.

She was taking the approach of saying that Maori only signed over governorship, not sovereignty, and Maori were still the sovereign of Aotearoa. I could see the appeal of her rhetoric - it empowered her by speaking of Maori as the ultimate holders of power in this country.

And this rhetoric - which I've heard many times from this generation of Maori leaders - has been useful for building Maori solidarity. But surely, they can see how Pakeha is offended by the idea that they are guests in what they consider to be their own house? And that alienating Pakeha only serves to alienate Maori, which serves nobody?

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After hearing Sharples' Durkheimian exposition of tapu (umm... the stuff about the sacred and mundane), I've realised that I'm not really as much of a secularist as I thought I was. Or rather, that none of us are.

We still hold certain things to be sacred, or taboo. For instance, we still attached spiritual or cultural significance to cemeteries, even though many of us would recognise that the people are dead, and there's no rational significance to a particular plot of land. But I can't go building a racetrack there.

I don't believe in the existence taniwha. I imagine that most people don't. But I imagine that we would have a lot of sympathy for people who protested against the construction of a road through a cemetery. By saying one is okay and the other isn't, it's saying that burial grounds can be sacred, but no other grounds can be. That's a distinction that doesn't really have a rational basis.

It doesn't mean, of course, that we should consider all blood to be tapu, and stop all the blood screening and blood banks, because the cost of that (in human terms) would be too great. But if respecting spiritual and cultural sensitivities is something simple, like not having a giant roast pig outside a synagogue, then why not?

Is re-routing a road too much? Possibly. But really, is having civil servants spend a bit of time at Maori ceremonies (assuming they're properly done) too much? That's much harder a case to make, especially considering that they don't do any real work anyway...