China Is Cracking Down on Cantonese Language Advocacy in Hong Kong
China Is Cracking Down on Cantonese Language Advocacy in Hong Kong
Some view the recent shutdown of a Cantonese advocacy group as the latest crackdown on civil liberties in the former British colony.
Suppressing the local language. Happened in Australia, the Americas, and so many other places. It's a symptom of the overall racism.
Can´t control the population if they have their own language.
How insecure do you have to be that you find it necessary to suppress a language?
Ask any european colonial power. Language is very powerful in uniting and dividing people. Using language to repress a cultural identity is not unheard of and not necessarily the sign of insecurity. It is a tried and tested method (russia is doing it in Ukraine as well).
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Cantonese language advocacy group in Hong Kong stopped operations after local officials raided the family house of its chairman last week over an essay published three years ago.
It’s the latest sign of waning freedoms in Hong Kong, since a sweeping national security law was passed in 2020 that has since been used to curtail civil liberties in the city and stamp out anything perceived as a critique of or threat to Beijing’s expanding influence in the former British colony-turned-Chinese enclave.
Andrew Lok Han Chan, the chair and founder of Societas Linguistica Hongkongensis (SLHK)—which formed in 2013 and has advocated for the preservation of Cantonese or Guangdonghua, a language with origins in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong (formerly called Canton) and also widely used in Hong Kong and Macau—announced on Facebook on Monday that he was disbanding the group “effective immediately,” to “ensure the safety of my family and former members.”
Under Xi Jinping’s rule, as China has increasingly repressed Hong Kong’s freedoms and identity, Tsang says, Hongkongers have viewed identifying with Cantonese as a means to push back.
The SLHK’s shutdown falls in line with Xi’s other measures to increase the city’s swift integration with China, Tsang adds: “Dissent that can be seen as posing any kind of challenge to the CCP’s authority is no longer permitted in Hong Kong."
In 2016, the dystopian film “Ten Years”—which depicted a Hong Kong that has Mandarin as the dominant language—was reportedly banned from Chinese public screenings at Beijing’s behest.
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the essay that police asked to be taken down was “Our Time” by Siu Gaa, which imagines Hong Kong in 2050 after a government crackdown on linguistic and ethnic minorities as well as freedom of religion in the city
It's not about Cantonese. It's they hate this essay for some reason. Whether that's better or worse is up to your judgement.
They’re doing the same thing they did back in the 90s with Shanghainese, this time on a much larger scale. Disgusting.
I have a hunch this language suppression meme is fake news. I'll get back to you guys in a decade or two to see if I was right.