Foreign Correspondent: What Is The U.S. Role In The Hong Kong Protests?

by Reese Erlich

I first met Jason Lee when he was promoting jazz concerts in his hometown of Hong Kong. More recently, he has been sending me Facebook messages about the Hong Kong protests. You would think that a relatively prosperous, 43-year-old Hong Konger would support the demonstrations that have rocked that city since June. Well, you may be surprised by his views.

Lee, who spends time in both Hong Kong and mainland China, says protesters’ attacks on police and government buildings “are going too far.” Referring to how they recently closed the Hong Kong airport, he asks, “Would the U.S.A. let JFK airport be occupied for one day?”

Protestors carrying British flags and spray painting anti-communist slogans on legislative offices don’t understand the region's colonial history when British troops brutally occupied Hong Kong, Lee tells me in a phone interview. “I’m Chinese from Hong Kong,” says Lee. “I love my country, China.”

The protest movement began in opposition to a proposed extradition law, which demonstrators claimed would allow political dissidents to be extradited to China. Hong Kong officials said the law wouldn’t be used for political repression but later withdrew it.

Some Hong Kongers, Lee included, think the protesters’ calls for “democracy” are really demands for independence from China, even a return to British colonial rule.

“They want the movement to go on and on by raising new demands,” Lee says. “And then they claim the government isn’t responding.”

Sharp class divisions

One major factor driving the protests is economic inequality. For many years, Hong Kong was a key financial and commercial outpost for the People's Republic of China (PRC). But, as the PRC’s economy expanded, it didn’t need Hong Kong as a middle man and the territory’s economy declined relative to China’s.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong billionaires made huge profits leading to one of the world’s highest rates of income inequality.

Housing is now in short supply and Hong Kong rents are the highest in the world. Many young adults still live with their parents or crowd into small, subdivided apartments.

“My apartment is 350 square feet,” Sean Starrs, a Hong Kong professor, told the Real News Network. “My students say, well what do you do with all that space?”

And, as always, Washington is happy to take advantage of those complaints for its own odious purposes.

In the old days, the CIA would slip wads of cash to dissidents in order to promote anti-government riots and install pro-U.S. regimes. That method worked for Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973.

Nowadays, the United States uses the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to spread propaganda to accomplish the same goals. The NED is supposed to build democracy but in reality promotes dissidents who favor U.S. style capitalism, and it funds aspiring autocrats.

I don't think the CIA initiated the demonstrations, but the events bear a strong resemblance to other U.S.-manipulated "color" revolutions.

Color revolutions vs. genuine uprisings

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, several former Soviet republics faced a series of elections, mass demonstrations and coups. In Georgia the uprising was called a "rose revolution." In Ukraine, it was orange. During the 2013 Maidan revolt in Ukraine, the U.S. role in manipulating the mass movement and selecting the country's new president was revealed publically.

On the other hand, popular, mass uprisings in 2011 overthrew dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. So how do you tell the difference between genuine uprisings and the color revolts?

The key questions are who is leading the protests and what would happen if they took power? Would the country go in a progressive direction or join the reactionary camp led by the United States? While no one party or recognized coalition leads the Hong Kong protests, there are identifiable political trends.

Political trends in Hong Kong

The pan-democratic forces call for universal suffrage and direct elections of Hong Kong officials. Critics say those calls for democracy cover up their close alliance with U.S. policy and their rejection of eventual unity with China. The pan-democrats suffered surprising losses in last year's legislative council elections.

The umbrella protests of 2014 accelerated the rise of another trend, the localists, a xenophobic rightwing movement that calls for “self determination” (independence) from Beijing.

“They think Hong Kongers are better than Chinese,” says Elvin Ho, a retired business consultant living in Hong Kong. Native Hong Kongers mostly speak Cantonese, he explains in a phone interview. “Localists will pick a fight with random targets during the riot, who speak Mandarin, and bully them.”

Imagine for a moment that the PRC ceased to exist. Would Hong Kong transform itself into a democratic society? I think some combination of localists and pan-democratic forces would come to power and then violently repress those who supported the PRC and the previous Hong Kong government.

Sound farfetched? That's what has happened when the pro-western forces came back to power in Ukraine and Hungary.

But the PRC does exist, and it's not about to allow Hong Kong independence. China has massed paramilitary police along the Hong Kong border as a clear threat against the protestors. Many Hong Kongers are getting tired of the constant disruptions and violence on both sides.

So far the Hong Kong government has bided its time, hoping the public will tire of the constant turmoil. We can only hope the current crisis ends without further violence.

Foreign Correspondent: What’s Really Going On In Hong Kong?

-by Reese Erlich
@ReeseErlich

For more than three months, people in Hong Kong massed in the streets to protest a proposed extradition law. Critics say it would allow China to extradite dissenting students, journalists, and business people to the mainland, where they could face prison for their views. Rallies and marches of tens of thousands grew to perhaps almost two million at their peak.

“I was very angry about the proposed law,” says Adrian Leong, a former Hong Kong resident and political activist in San Francisco. “Everyone could see themselves getting in trouble.”

But supporters of the Beijing government say the proposed law would only allow extradition of people accused of serious crimes, not political dissidents. Western governments and media use the phony extradition issue to foment rifts between Hong Kong and the mainland, they argue.

“They want China to splinter and die,” says Nathan Rich, an American YouTube blogger living in China.


 


To sort out these competing claims, we have to understand some Hong Kong history.

Opium Wars

Starting in the late 1700s, the British East India Company illegally sold opium to China. By the 1830s, British and American entrepreneurs became fabulously wealthy selling opium, while addicting millions of Chinese. When the Chinese government ordered the sales to stop, the British sent gunboats to Chinese ports and fought the first Opium War from 1839-1842.

The Qing dynasty lost the war and was forced to cede Hong Kong island to the British, along with parts of other port cities. The British launched the Second Opium War from 1853-1858, in which they seized more Chinese territory and forced China to legalize opium.

For centuries, China had the world’s largest economy, selling far more goods overseas than it imported. The opium wars were fought in the name of  “free trade,”—i.e., the right of British and American drug barons to open up the Chinese market.

Modern day imperialism

Selling addictive drugs to China didn’t end in the nineteenth century. During the reign of President Ronald Reagan, for example, the U.S. forced China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to buy U.S. made cigarettes-- all in the name of opening their markets to free trade.

But by the 1980s, the People’s Republic of China was emerging as a major world power, and Britain agreed give up Hong Kong. In 1997, Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty with an agreement that it would maintain two different political and economic systems. It became known as “one country, two systems.”

One country, two systems was a bold step, something never tried before. China would keep its socialist economy; Hong Kong would remain capitalist. Hong Kong would maintain governing institutions established by the United Kingdom, including independent courts but also indirect election of top political leaders. The one country, two systems would last for 50 years.

The Communist Party of China hoped that, given time, Hong Kong residents would come to see the advantages of socialism and voluntarily join the mainland. They hoped Hong Kong could be a model for integrating Taiwan into China.

But Hong Kong had existed as a separate entity for well more than 100 years, and reunification wasn’t going to be easy. Many Hongkongers seek to maintain their capitalist institutions for as long as possible. They want direct election of political leaders and a judiciary that tilts their way in case of disputes with Beijing.

Hongkongers have developed their own identity, notes Tom Fowdy, a China analyst who attended university in Hong Kong. “On paper they are the same ethnic group, but they are culturally different.”

Extradition law

The roots of the current protests can be traced to the case of Chan Tong Kai. In February, he flew to Taiwan with his girlfriend, strangled her, stuffed her body in a suitcase, dumped her in a field, and flew back to Hong Kong. Although he confessed, he couldn’t be sent to Taiwan because Hong Kong had no extradition treaty. (Hong Kong has extradition agreements with 20 countries but not China, Macao, and Taiwan.)

Hong Kong authorities couldn’t charge Chan with a murder that took place elsewhere. So a Hong Kong court convicted him on a lesser charge and sentenced him to a few months in jail.

Outrage over the Chan case led Hong Kong legislators to draft a law that would allow extradition to any country on a case by case basis. Taiwan later indicated it would not seek Chan’s extradition, making the murder case moot. But the extradition issue remained on the table.

Critics claim the proposed law would enable China to extradite and imprison political dissidents from Hong Kong. However, the bill’s supporters point out that an extraditable offense must be a crime in both China and Hong Kong, which protects Hongkongers from arbitrary arrest. And the law specifically prohibits extradition for political crimes.

In addition, the bill granted Hong Kong’s chief executive the ability to review extradition requests and allows for two separate judicial review processes. And according to the chief executive’s office, extradition would “only cover 37 offences punishable with imprisonment for seven years or above, and none of them prohibits the exercise of the right to freedom of expression.”

But many people in Hong Kong simply don’t trust Beijing. They cite examples when China  remanded Hong Kong residents without following judicial procedures. “The Communist Party of China no longer respects the two systems,” says activist Leong. “It only respects the one country.”

Demonstrations

On March 31, Hongkongers marched and rallied against the proposed legislation. By June, the mostly peaceful protests grew to hundreds of thousands. On June 9, organizers said two million people marched, while police put the number at 338,000.

Then, in a preplanned action on July 1, hundreds of militants smashed their way into Hong Kong’s legislative offices, where they destroyed furniture and sprayed anti-communist graffiti on the walls. They draped the union jack over the speaker’s podium.

Analyst Fowdy says displaying the British flag doesn’t mean protestors want a return to British rule. Rather, they want Hong Kong to “remain a special administrative region under Chinese sovereignty. They don’t want Hong Kong to be just another Chinese city.”

Whatever the militants’ intention, in my opinion, raising the British flag leaves the impression that they favor independence. That plays into the hands of Western powers who have long sought to divide China.

It’s no coincidence that most mainstream media unabashedly support the protestors and seek to excuse the violent actions. An opinion article in the Wall Street Journal urged readers to see the vandalism as “an act of desperation after years of frustration.” I’ve yet to see the Journal apply that logic to Black Lives Matters protestors in the U.S.

Here’s the bottom line: Hong Kong is Chinese; it’s not an independent country. Any effort towards independence angers mainland Chinese, not just the government in Beijing.

Contrary to the impression left by the mainstream media, Hong Kong opinion is divided on the extradition law. On June 30, tens of thousands gathered for a rally supporting extradition and backing the Hong Kong government. Legislators say they collected 700,000 verified signatures on a petition supporting the proposed law.

For now, however, the momentum is with the anti-government forces. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam suspended the bill from consideration and on July 9 declared it “dead.” Critics say that isn’t enough. They want her to withdraw the legislation completely and to resign.

So demonstrations are likely to continue. China and Hong Kong will be struggling for many years to determine exactly what “one country, two systems” really means.

Republicans Are People Too-- Or So They Once Claimed On The TV

This week Rand Paul took a lot of heat for saying aloud something that everyone already knows: the GOP Brand sucks. Speaking in Detroit, Paul said, "Remember Domino's Pizza? They admitted, 'Hey, our pizza crust sucks.' The Republican Party brand sucks and so people don't want to be a Republican and for 80 years, African-Americans have had nothing to do with Republicans."

OK, he has a point, but is it really the Republican Party that African-Americans are so wary of? Or is it the toxic conservative ideology that the party embraces? And that conservative ideology isn't owned solely by Republicans. And it isn't mistrusted solely by African-Americans. Just over a week ago the Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. His blunt remarks reflect a widely held view among the Hong Kong elite that the general public cannot be trusted to govern the city well. Do you think its any different from the view American conservatives hold?

Thursday another running dog of the conservative capitalist elite in Hong Kong, Laura Cha Shih May-lung, the chairwoman of the Financial Services Development Council, told poor people to be patient. "American slaves were liberated in 1861 but did not get voting rights until 107 years later, so why can't Hong Kong wait for a while?"

The anti-democratic nature of conservatism transcends national boundaries and transcends partisan politics. The essential nature of conservatism is simple: maintaining the economic and social status quo so that those with the most wealth and power remain the ones with the most wealth and power (and get to pass that along to their offspring). Yes, that simple-- and everywhere on earth and across historical eras. Historian Rick Perlstein touched on it-- and the beginning to the Republican Party descent into madness-- when he surveyed the post-Nixon resignation Ford Administration in the 1970s in his new book, The Invisible Bridge. During a meeting of Big Business lobbyists from the Conference Board to discuss how the very idea of "social responsibility" was slowing down profits, one executive mused aloud, "One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II." One of his colleagues couldn't agree more-- and sounded very much like today's Hong Kong elites: "The have-nots are gaining steadily more political power to distribute the wealth downward." The Conference Board types were determined to do something about it-- and they have... in a major way.

Before explaining the infamous headline above, Perlstein mentioned a journalist tried-- to no avail-- to persuade random Americans to sign the Declaration of Independence around July 4th. "Commie junk," one called it. Another threatened to call the cops on him. A third said, "Be careful who you show that kind of anti-government stuff to, buddy." And: "The boss will have to read this before I can let you put it in the shop window. But, politically, I can tell you he don't lean that way. He's a Republican."

The roots of the Great New York City Fiscal Crisis lay in recession: the economic downturn of 1974-75 hit the Northeast with a speed and force all out of proportion to the rest of the country. New York had always supported a program of middle class entitlement unlike anywhere else, a sort of socialism in one city: subsidized housing and day-care centers, free college at the world-class City University of New York, free museum admission, nineteen municipal hospitals, many of them world-class, free directory assistance-- amenities that seemed only natural for a metropolis transforming itself, in the boom years after World Wat II, into the greatest city in the world. "I do not propose," Mayor Robert F. Wagner pronounced in his 1965 budget message, "to permit our fiscal problems to set the klimits of our commitments to meet the essential needs of the cities." Neither, indeed did the city's investment banks who all but begged the city to keep borrowing money, because municipal bonds paid high interest rates, were exempt from federal, state and municipal taxes-- and seemed to entail negligible risk. It took two to tangle a city in unsustainable debt.

...In December 1974 Mayor Beame made a pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., to meet with Treasury Secretary William Simon. Beame explained the actions he had already taken to correct the city's fiscal imbalances, including freezing most city hiring and merit pay increases; he them argued that, given that America's greatest international city had to pay higher interest rates than any municipality in the country, it would be in the national interest for the Treasury Department to loan New York the money it needed by buying municipal paper directly.

The Treasury secretary flipped.

"Mayor," he said, "if we did that the taxpayers would end up financing the campaign promises of every profligate local politician in the country."

There was something disingenuous in the reaction. Bill Simon had formerly been senior partner in charge of government and municipal bonds at Salomon Brothers, and a member of the investment bank's seven-man executive committee-- that is, one of the very people responsible for lending so much money New York in the first place... [T]here was plenty of blame to go around. But other motives, other assumptions, lay beyond Bill Simon's recalcitrance as well. They were ideological. [He wrote] "nothing has destroyed New York's finances but the liberal political formula... Liberal politics, endlessly glorifying its own 'humanism," has in fact been annihilating the very conditions for human survival."

He spoke for his class. As a staffer wrote in a memo proposing language for First National City Bank's president to use in discussion with the mayor, this crisis was an opportunity: "many things"-- he cited higher subway fares, cutbackks in the city workforce, and budget cuts generally-- "can be done even if they are not technically possible." Technically possible, he meant, if interest groups like the municipal unions, the board of education, or municipal hospital administrators were afforded their traditional political deference. Well, they had been deferred to long enough. "The time," the staffer insisted, "is now.:" Now it was the capitalists' time to be deferred to.

...On May 29, Beame complied, announcing an austerity budget calling for the immediate elimination of 38,000 jobs-- more than 12 percent of all city employment, a four-day municipal workweek, reductions to CUNY admissions, and library and health center closures... [Simon:] "We're going to sell New York to the Shah of Iran"... Simon spoke of "parasitical" municipal workers, conceptually separate from the "productive population." They drew, he said "appalling" pensions though for what it was worth the pension of the average retiring New York City policeman-- $9,000-- was $3,000 less than in Chicago, $8,000 less than Detroit, and less than half that in Los Angeles and San Francisco. City teachers and firemen also earned less in salary than in all of those cities, with a considerably higher cost of living.

... Republican councils were obsessed with the poll showing that only 18 percent of the public identified with the Grand Old Party. Informally, there had been talks about whether to change its tainted name. Another public relations idea was a joke book, Republican Humor. Every Republican congressman would be asked to contribute. "Probably some of them won't have anything funny to offer," a staffer observed. What the Grand Old Party settled on instead was three half-hour fundraising TV specials featuring everyday Republicans who want to tell why they have stuck with the GOP." The series, coordinated with accompanying lapel buttons for the party faithful to wear to work the next day, was titled Republicans Are People Too! The second installment ran on July 1, up against M*A*S*H on CBS and a Tuesday Movie of the Week on ABC about a talk radio host who specialized in insulting his audience, laughing off a caller who said she was about to commit suicide-- and then she did. The GOP show's them, more cheerful, was "Republicans are people who care." It cost $124,000 to produce. It brought in $5,515. The announced third episode never ran.

At Baroness Thatcher's funeral, journalist Jonathan Mirsky wonders: What was I doing there?

"The Bishop of London, the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Richard Chartres, KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order), gave a kind of eulogy in which he recalled sitting next to Prime Minister Thatcher at a banquet: 'She gripped my arm and said, "Don't touch the duck pâté, Bishop. It's terribly fattening." ' "

-- Jonathan Mirksy, on the funeral of Margaret Thatcher

by Ken

In "One Hour & Four Minutes With Mrs. Thatcher" in the May 23 New York Review of Books (only an abstract available free online), longtime China and East Asia correspondent Jonathan Mirsky explains how -- he supposes -- he came to be "on the list" for Margaret Thatcher's funeral, as the woman from the Cabinet Office assured him he was before sending him his invitation by courier.

"Why me?" Mirsky asks.

I had never been a parliamentary journalist. My career was as a foreign correspondent in China and Hong Kong. Margaret Thatcher's visits to China were brief and unsatisfactory. But I did have a little history with Mrs. Thatcher, including four personal encounters.

And he proceeds to tell the story of those four meetings and the estimated hous & four minutes. By way of background he explains:

As leader of the opposition, Mrs. Thatcher had gone to China in 1977 and hadn't liked it. In 1982, now prime minister, she went again to Beijing to negotiate the handover to China of British-ruled Hong Kong, stipulated by a nineteenth-century colonial treaty to occur in 1997. For three days she argued with Premier Zhao Ziyang and Senior Leader Deng Xiaoping for some sort of special arrangement that would not include the colony under direct mainland rule, but was forced to agree to what actually occurred, namely that Hong Kong would return to China on July 1, 1997, although Deng agreed that Beijing would not interfere with Hong Kong's internal arrangements for fifty years.

"My own meetings with Mrs. Thatcher," Mirksy explains, "took place after that agreement." To facilitate score-keeping, I'm breaking down the account meeting by meeting, with time checks added.

MEETING 1: 1 minute

In early June 1989, I returned to London from Beijing, where I been a correspondent for The Observer. The Armed Police in Tiananmen Square had assaulted me on the night of June 3, knocked out five teeth, fractured my left arm, and beaten me black and blue. A few days later I found myself at a reception of some sort where, unknown to me, the prime minister was also present. I was led up to her and introduced. She told me she had been reading my dispatches and asked if "we," her preferred pronoun for herself, could do anything for me, did I have a good doctor, and to let her know if there was anything I needed. We shook hands. One minute.

MEETING 2: 1 minute

In 1997, not long before the handover to which she had reluctantly agreed, Lady Thatcher, as she now was, came to Hong Kong to deliver a highly paid speech to the Chinese and British Chambers of Commerce. I was now East Asia editor of The Times of London. The day before her speech she asked to walk about central Hong Kong, accompanied by local and foreign reporters. Suddenly she declared, "I must buy some socks for Denis," her husband, who was in London. A nearby Marks & Spencer was cleared and police stood in the doorway. I trotted to the unguarded back door and inside saw Lady Thatcher at the sock counter with a young saleswoman. She was just saying she had forgotten her money. I paid for the socks; she took the bag, didn't thank me, and went outside. I left by the back door. Another minute.

MEETING 3: 1 hour (approx.)

That night, Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, a Tory MP, and one of those who, during her third term, deposed Prime Minister Thatcher, gave a dinner party for her to which my wife and I were invited. After the meal, Lady Thatcher sat on a couch; guests were led up to it, chatted for a few minutes, and then made way for another guest. Near midnight I was on the couch, telling Lady Thatcher that when she gave her speech the next day she must mention that many international business deals with China were concluded across the border in Hong Kong, where there was (and is) a rule of law. I said it would be important to underline that difference with mainland China. She said she didn't know that international contracts on the mainland were routinely signed in Hong Kong, but no, no, no, the speech was already written.

After half an hour still on the couch she looked over at the heavy-eyed Patten and the few remaining guests and asked what he thought. He said, "It would be insane to get between Margaret Thatcher and Jonathan Mirsky." Finally, she agreed to include what I suggested in her speech: she would emphasize that contracts had legal force in Hong Kong that they did not have on the mainland. At least it would be clear that Hong Kong had a rule of law lacking in the China controlled by Beijing. As my wife and I left Government House, her speechwriter came up behind us and whispered, "Fuck you, I'll have to spend the rest of the night rewriting the speech." About an hour.

MEETING 4: 2 minutes

The next night I waited outside the banqueting hall where Lady Thatcher was to give her speech. I would be admitted to the hall after the meal. When it ended the doors flew open and guests rushed to the toilets. There was a long queue outside the ladies'. Mrs. Thatcher bustled over and exclaimed, "I must get back into the hall for my speech." I told her to wait right there, went into the gents', where there were ten or so men; I asked them to leave because Lady Thatcher needed to come in. Zipping up, they left. "Go ahead in," I said to Lady Thatcher. "I'll stand at the door." She went in, after a minute or two came out, didn't thank me, went back into the hall, and gave her speech with my suggestion included. Two minutes.

SO WHAT ABOUT THE GREAT EVENT?

The funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral was one of those events that, as they say here, "The British do damn well." The cathedral was stuffed, as they also say here, with "the great and the good." I recognized one or two of both, including ex-Governor Patten. The coffin was carried to the cathedral door on a hundred-year-old gun carriage drawn by matched, perfectly behaved black horses and escorted by Brigade of Guards officers wearing their bearskin headpieces, on similarly matched chargers. Eight representatives of the services carried the coffin in perfect step into St. Paul's. The Queen, very small, and Prince Philip, with a drop on the end of his nose, were escorted in, preceded by the Lord Mayor carrying the black Mourning Sword. The Bishop of London, the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Richard Chartres, KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order), gave a kind of eulogy in which he recalled sitting next to Prime Minister Thatcher at a banquet: "She gripped my arm and said, ‘Don't touch the duck pâté, Bishop. It's terribly fattening.'"

I sat next to a general who long ago, during the Troubles, commanded the army in Northern Ireland and slept every night with a pistol under his pillow. Behind me was a Guards colonel in a scarlet tunic hung with medals and carrying a funeral "short sword." He said to his neighbor, "By God, as I was walking over here a pretty girl said to me, ‘Wow, you'd make a great accessory to me in Chanel.'" As I said, what was I doing there?

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Nepal Heading Backwards On Same-Sex Marriage?

I was especially glad I've been taking my Rhodiola Force 300, which purports to help you feel more energetic and improve your mood, mental alertness, memory and physical endurance but was recommended to me by an L.A. herbologist as something to help with altitude sickness. It's derived from Rhodiola rosea or Rose Root, an exalted herbal stress “adaptogen.” It thrives in high altitudes and in nature’s most challenging climates and is supposed to enhance concentration and endurance and support optimal immune, adrenal and cardiovascular function under conditions of severe stress. It's advertised as being "widely used by Russian athletes and cosmonauts to increase energy," and "delivers the promise of an inner oasis of peace and energy in our hurly-burly world... Those phytonutrients include numerous and unique anti-stress compounds like rosavins, salidrosides and other biologically active compounds."

I spent yesterday trekking in the Himalayan foothills at around 8,000 feet, and I felt great, even in the rain. We were wandering around, looking down at the clouds, in knee-high rubber boots, sure we were protected from the leeches. That was why we came to Nepal. That and... well, this very accurate description by Frommer's which updates my own first memories of the place from a far more tranquil (and less "developed") 1971:

Kathmandu. The very name conjures up images of snow-covered peaks, snake charmers and mountaineers, holy men and sacred cows. Perhaps no other city on earth has seemed so mysterious. This city, capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, lies in a wide valley hidden behind a wall of nearly impenetrable mountains. Today, winging into Kathmandu on an international flight, the Mahabhaharat Range slides by below as the Himalayas shimmer in the distance. The jumbled landscape doesn't give the appearance that it could ever provide a level surface large enough to land a Boeing or Airbus. Then, as the peaks below grow uncomfortably close to the belly of the plane, mountainsides give way to gentler slopes and terraced hillsides, which are dun-colored in the post-monsoon months favored by trekkers. Brick houses dot the fields of a seemingly idyllic rural setting. Suddenly the city comes into view-- uniformly brown and low-rise, it sprawls across the valley floor. There's a quick glimpse of a huge white hemisphere in the distance, and suddenly the plane is on the runway. The passengers breathe a communal sigh of relief for having safely landed amid the Himalayan peaks. The excitement is palpable as passengers wait to deplane. Through the door lies Kathmandu, city of mystery, the most exotic city in Asia.

However, as feet hit tarmac, the reality of modern-day Kathmandu immediately comes to bear. The arrivals hall is a zoo and no one seems to know what to do. Guards want to inspect your bags as you leave the arrivals hall. Outside, hordes of taxi drivers, porters, and hotel touts block the exit door. Beyond the airport gates, the streets are chaotic at best. Clouds of blue-black smoke billow from diesel trucks, buses packed like sardine cans stop in the middle of the road, cows wander aimlessly, and horns blare incessantly. The smoke of funeral pyres mingles with the stench of garbage. Women in colorful saris dash out of the way of your careening taxi as it bounces upon potholes large enough to swallow a car.

However, once you have settled into your hotel, you can venture out onto the streets of old Kathmandu, where a different picture slowly begins to emerge. Kathmandu is a city of alleyways leading into the unknown, a city where roadside shrines are sprinkled with marigold petals and aging temples double as produce markets. Strange odors--a melange of incense, cow dung, and rotting garbage-- drift through the streets. Eerie discordant music-- the tinny jangling of cymbals, the drone of a harmonium, the pulse of drums-- might fill a nearly deserted square at nightfall as musicians sit hunched over their ancient instruments on the floor of a tiny temple. In the market, vendors swaddled in woolen shawls sit behind baskets full of mandarins and radishes. Kathmandu has been called a medieval city, and it is hard not to think of it as such as you wander its back streets. The lanes are narrow, and in the oldest parts of town, there is little traffic (though the few cars and motorcycles that venture into these ancient alleys make frequent use of their horns). People do the heavy work here, not vehicles. They carry heavy-laden baskets on their backs or slung from poles across their shoulders. Perhaps time has not completely stood still in Kathmandu, but it certainly has not passed as swiftly as it has in other parts of the world.

For more than a hundred years Kathmandu was cut off from the outside world by a government that wished to keep the country isolated. When the royal family was restored to power in the mid-1950s, Nepal opened its borders and the painful process of entering the 20th century began. Today, Kathmandu has much of the Western world's technology, but alas, many of its environmental and social woes as well. There are cars and computers, fax machines and factories, cellular phones and satellite TV. There are also traffic congestion and smog, deforestation and unemployment. However, with the help of the West, Nepal is working to overcome these problems. Kathmandu is certainly no Shangri-la, but it is one of the world's most fascinating cities, nonetheless.

Last year we saw how Nepal had moved so far as to legalize same-sex marriage after the people dumped the monarchy, like anywhere a bastion of conservatism, and embarked on a new progressive path. Well, we're not here to get married and it probably wouldn't have even crossed my mind except when I was in our hotel's business center I tried to access a post Ken wrote at DWT about the politics of same-sex marriage in the New York State Senate, a place not nearly as advanced as Nepal. There's nothing "sexy," let alone prurient about the post. But it was auto-blocked on the public internet. (I can access it in my room over the same wireless system.)

There's a Communist prime minister, a Maoist revolutionary opposition and one of the world's most vibrant revolutionary atmospheres in Nepal now. But there are also second thoughts about the legalization of same-sex marriage, now three years old.

Gay rights activists are alarmed by a new bill that could become law soon if approved by parliament as part of the government's bid to modernise the legal code-- Muluki Ain, or law of the land-- formulated in 1854 first.

The law and justice ministry, in consultation with judges, has completed the drafts of a new criminal code and a civil code of law, which were submitted in parliament recently after being approved by the council of ministers. ... The marriage clauses in the new codes define the union as only that between a man and a woman, treating homosexual unions as "unnatural sex offenses."

"The proposed civil and criminal laws contain provisions to re-criminalise so-called 'unnatural sexual offenses'," [said Manisha Dhakal, a transgender and senior member of the Blue Diamond Society, Nepal's pioneering gay rights organisation]. "These attempts by the law ministry are a clear sign not to follow international human rights standards, a clear intention not to implement the Supreme Court's decision and also go against the spirit of the interim and new draft constitution of Nepal."

In November 2008, Nepal's Supreme Court recognised homosexuals as a "natural people" and asked the government to ensure that they received the same rights and considerations as any other citizen. In the landmark judgment, the court also ordered the government to enact laws to allow same-sex marriages.

...Since 2008, Nepal has established itself as a gay rights haven with people flocking to the Himalayan nation for same sex unions.

In the past, couples from India and Britain have tied the knot in Nepal and during the monsoon, the Blue Diamond Society has planned a public wedding between a lesbian couple from the US.

The weddings are part of the community's effort to draw gay tourists to Nepal and have been welcomed by Nepal's tourism ministry, which is celebrating 2011 as Nepal Tourism Year with the target of bringing in one million air-borne visitors.

On my way to Nepal, I stopped over for a couple days in Hong Kong, one of the world's most modern cities. In many ways it's more modern, at least superficially, than any city in the U.S. But not in a gay way. There was a big to-do over the city-state, a semi-autonomous part of China, hiring a "gay conversion expert" to "cure" government employees.

Hong Kong has hired a prominent local psychiatrist who claims he can "re-wire" homosexuals as a trainer for its social welfare staff, sparking outrage among gay rights activists on Friday.

Critics said the move could be the world's first government-sponsored training session on gay conversion therapy, which includes prayer, cold showers and practising abstinence as a way to avoid same-sex relationships.

"The government seems to think that homosexuals are possessed by evil spirits and needed to be 'cleansed' or 'cured' through conversion therapy," Joseph Cho, a spokesman for gay rights group Rainbow Action, told reporters during a protest outside the city's Social Welfare Department Friday.

"They are criminalising people with same sex orientation-- this is an international joke," he added. ... Despite its reputation as an international financial hub, critics said Hong Kong remains a conservative city when it comes to gay rights, only decriminalising homosexuality in 1991.

A government survey in the 1990s concluded that most Hong Kong residents were "not ready" for laws banning discrimination against homosexuals, and the city had made little headway since to protect gays, said Dora Choi, director of the Gender Studies Committee at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"(But) this is very bizarre that the government would sponsor classes like these," she told AFP.

"It is the first time the government has publicly taken a stance on this issue. (It) should be neutral but it is obviously taking sides," she added.

Maybe both these countries are ready to write off gay tourists and eager to invite evangelicals instead-- or maybe ignorant bigots and hatemongers like David Tyree. Good luck with that!




POSTSCRIPT: Wedding Bells In The Himalayas

This week Courtney Mitchell and Sarah Welton, both of Denver, tied the knot in Dakshinkali Temple, just south of Kathmandu. It was front page news in the English-language newspapers here. The Himalayan Times:

It was a monsoon wedding indeed, albeit with a whirl.

An American professor and her compatriot lawyer today tied the knot at Dakshin Kali temple as per Hindu rituals, making it arguably the first lesbian marriage in Asia.

It was one proud moment once again for Sunil Babu Panta, Nepal’s only gay lawmaker, who had taken the charge of helping Courtney Mitchell (41) and Sarah Welton (48) get spliced today.

Up to 60 gay rights activists and other onlookers on the temple premises cheered as a Hindu priest chanted final mantras to declare the two women a couple. Courtney was dressed in Nepali Daura Suruwal and Topi as groom and Sarah was clad in a red sari, drawing the attention of quite a many around and making them guess whether a film shooting was going on.‘Which film is being shot?’ or ‘What a marriage between woman and woman!’ were some of the comments with which the surrounding was abuzz.

Courtney, who had earlier lived in Nepal for six years, said they chose Nepal for the marriage and hoped their country would recognise their nuptial as Nepal does. Same-sex marriage is not recognised in her homeland Colorado. The couple later threw a party at a nearby resort.

Panta and his Blue Diamond Society, an organisation advocating gay and lesbian rights, had earlier hosted a gay wedding for British citizen Sanjay Shah and his Indian partner, who had refused to be identified.

Nepal hopes to become Asia’s biggest hub for gay and lesbian tourism and improve the country’s economy by tapping into this multibillion-dollar market. No one seems to know if the country will enshrine marriage equality in the new Constitution or abolish it.