In a quiet Hong Kong cul-de-sac, hundreds gathered over the weekend to say goodbye to an independent bookstore after weekly government inspections spurred by anonymous complaints forced it to put up the shutters.
Mount Zero said it would close at the end of last month after constant complaints to authorities, who had accused it of illegally occupying government land by tiling a pavement in front of the store, with the threat of fines and jail time.
Since Hong Kong imposed a national security law in 2020 the territory’s cultural sector has been hit by censorship fears, and the handful of bookstores that remain say they are operating in an environment of increasing pressure.
Photo: AFP
“Authorities often say Hong Kong will go back to normal ... [but] these things will haunt our lives,” said political scientist Ivan Choy, who attended the gathering.
Hong Kong recently enacted a second national security law, which critics fear will further drive pro-democracy sentiments underground and chill cultural and artistic freedoms.
The territory’s government has rejected allegations the laws curtail freedom of expression.
However, Mount Zero has lived through dramatic political change since its founding six years ago and book lovers mourned that the liberal-minded bookstore had seemingly become a victim of that shift.
Leo, a 20-year-old student who declined to give his last name, said he worried “the categories of books allowed for sale would be restricted,” hurting other independent bookstores.
Mount Zero often hosted cultural events such as book talks in its outdoor area and gained a devoted following. Margaret Ng, a barrister and former pro-democracy politician, said the two-story bookstore had offered like-minded readers a vital place to gather.
“You can see in Mount Zero the aspirations of the young people to express themselves in literature and to form their own community,” she said.
Several independent bookstores in December last year reported spikes in government inspections, some prompted by anonymous complaints including fire safety and labor regulations.
Announcing its closure last year, Mount Zero said it hoped “the mysterious complainant can take a break” after it received weekly visits from different government departments.
“The time saved can be used to sit down and read a book properly,” it said.
Agence France-Presse could not independently verify the nature of the complaints.
Below a mosaic sign that read “Ideas are bulletproof,” sweet green pea soup and barbecue pork were passed around in the bookshop’s final hours.
As night fell, the store’s lights dimmed and readers lamenting its loss said the impact on the local community would not be forgotten.
“What really counts in the case of Mount Zero is not a particular bookshop,” Ng said. “It’s the spirit, and that spirit is unvanquished.”
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant