Gray Lady Goes Yellow: Joshua Wong Cast as Bobby Sands

I have been critical of the Umbrella Movement protesters not because I believe they are insincere but rather because they are being used by Western powers as the latest iteration of a color-revolution scheme designed to create problems for adversary nations; in this case, the People's Republic of China.

Events of the last week, beginning November 30 with the failed attempt by students to expand their Admiralty occupation to include government buildings, followed by the short-lived hunger strike by student-leader Joshua Wong and the staged surrender to the police of Occupy Central leaders this past Wednesday, make clear that the Umbrella Movement is a Utopian one. Hong Kong students are fighting for something that exists nowhere on the planet -- completely unfettered elections.

While protesters in the United States, a continental-sized nation of 316 million people, are outraged at the continuation of lethal police brutality and racism and have been mobilized since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last August, predating the Umbrella Movement by a month. I would wager that if you tallied the amount of space devoted to the Hong Kong democracy protests compared to the racial justice/police brutality uprising caused by Michael Brown's murder you would find that the Umbrella Movement comes out on top.

If we include in the comparison events after grand juries refused to indict police in both the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases then, probably, the weight of coverage favors the racial justice protesters.

But this doesn't change my thinking that the Western "media clergy," as Samir Amin referred to the Fourth Estate in a recent Monthly Review article, has engaged in boosterism when it comes to the Umbrella Movement.

To see what I mean all one need do is read "A Frail Face Becomes a Defiant Focus of Hong Kong’s Waning Protest Movement" by Chris Buckley and Alan Wong. The story appeared on Friday. The next day Joshua Wong scrapped his hunger strike.

HONG KONG — A spindly, stooped teenager in a blue windbreaker shuffled from a tent on the edge of Hong Kong’s main remaining protest camp. Dozens of onlookers applauded, shouted to him or just stared. Cameras snapped and journalists leaned in to catch his soft voice.

The teenager, Joshua Wong, who embodied the hopes of the city’s pro-democracy street movement in its headiest days, has become the exhausted yet defiant focus of what looks to many like the movement’s final throes. 

Mr. Wong, 18, on Friday entered the fourth day of a hunger strike at the very place where he had instigated the confrontation that ignited months of street demonstrations. On Sept. 26, students occupied a gated forecourt of the local government’s offices after Mr. Wong shouted encouragement. Hong Kong residents took to the streets in large numbers two days later, after the police tried to disperse the students with tear gas.

This week, Mr. Wong and four other students on hunger strike huddled in tents next to those same steel gates. On Friday, one of the students gave up, and Mr. Wong and the others appeared increasingly spent. 

“I’m quite tired from the hunger strike right now, but I will persist in fighting,” Mr. Wong said in an interview on Friday, hunched, pale and occasionally slumping on a chair. 

Under a canopy, he and the other strikers lie wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags in their one-man tents, surrounded by supporters and given constant attention. Doctors visit every few hours. Mr. Wong and his fellow hunger strikers periodically post information about their blood-sugar levels and other health indicators on the social media they use compulsively.

It goes on like that. You would think Wong is at death's door approaching Bobby Sands status of two-months without food.

Mr. Wong occasionally emerges from his tent, his slight frame even lighter than its usual 99 pounds after days without nourishment, apart from a teaspoon of sugar mixed in water and 100 milliliters of an energy drink taken on doctors’ advice. A friend steadies him as he makes his way to a public toilet. On Friday, Mr. Wong used a wheelchair, his legs under a blanket. 

Still, he and the other hunger strikers have mustered the energy to speak to hundreds of protesters who gather around the camp’s main stage at night. On Friday night, Mr. Wong was perched on the stage and in a quiet voice urged the demonstrators to remain steadfast.

This is four days without food. This is yellow journalism. Nowhere, for instance, will you find the Gray Lady similarly following Palestinian hunger strikes in Israeli prisons.

As I said, Joshua Wong gave up his fast this past Saturday. And now, as the Hong Kong government has politely alerted the remaining protesters that their two encampments will be taken down, the Umbrella Movement is fracturing with some calling for resistance.

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UPDATE: In fairness to the Gray Lady, there was an excellent unsigned editorial this morning, "Release the Guantánamo Force-Feeding Videos," about the Guantanamo hunger strikers and the U.S. policy of force-feeding them.