October 21st Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor ,

On the eve of talking on a trade war between China and the United States, sports between China and the United States were suddenly politicized. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has hardened his rhetoric after a storm erupted when Daryl Morey — general manager of Houston Rockets — expressed supporting Hong Kong protest as his perspective. On Oct. 4, he had posted a picture to twitter which the picture in the tweet had indicated “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.” However, the post was deleted afterwards. He claimed he could not represent the whole team. Also, both the NBA and the Rockets have mentioned in statements that Morey’s “Inappropriate Speech has deeply hurt a lot of Chinese fans.” At the same time, Americans were unsatisfied with NBA because they thought Morey should have freedom of speech and NBA should not control their employees to say something might opposite to their thought.

It’s been the fourth month for the people of Hong Kong people fighting for freedom. They are asking for five demands. Including “completely withdraw the extradition bill,” “recall the characterisation of protestors as rioters,” “free all the arrested protestors and drop their charges,” “thoroughly investigated the Hong Kong Police Force abusing of power” and “full implementation of the chief executive and legislative council for a genuine Universal Suffrage.”

There were a million and two million of Hong Kong people joined the demonstration about withdrawing the bill, but the government had not done anything to make the situation better. While Hong Kong people were doing protest, HK government asked HK Police to flog fellow protestors. Keep shooting tear gases to protestors and keep catching young people abusively and with violence — no matter if they are protestors or innocent. Hong Kong is a society with rule of law and these things should not have happened.

– Ho-Yeung Chu