By FREE THINKERS COLLECTIVE February 22, 2022
Hong Kong's population must undergo three rounds of compulsory coronavirus testing, the city's leader said Tuesday, as she confirmed mainland Communist Chinese officials were stepping up oversight.
On Tuesday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam revealed a doubling down of the city government's so called "zero-Covid" approach.
"This quickly worsening epidemic has far exceeded the Hong Kong government's ability to tackle it, so there is great need for the central government's support in fighting the virus," she told reporters.
Xia Baolong, Beijing's Hong Kong and Macau affairs chief, was coordinating the mainland's response from the border city of Shenzhen, she added.
Under the new rules, all 7.4 million residents will have to go through three rounds of compulsory testing in March, although Lam did not give a start date.
The tests will be spread out over a number of days with residents also having to take multiple rapid antigen tests every day at home in between.
"Those who do not take the universal test will be held liable," Lam warned, adding that there was no guarantee the steps would fully stamp out the current outbreak.
Schools and multiple businesses such as gyms, bars and beauty salons will remain closed into late April with education facilities turned into local testing centres.
Flights from nine countries including Britain and the United States will remain banned.
Isolation units
Lam also confirmed that Hong Kong would continue trying to isolate all coronavirus patients, including asymptomatic patients, in "temporary facilities" which are being built with the help of mainland authorities.
"We reiterate that isolation is still our policy objective," she said.
Hong Kong has largely resisted the experimental jabs. Among the elderly, only 43% of people aged 80 or over have received even one dose.
China's response to Hong Kong is more likely a political attack, disguised as an attempt to limit COVID spread.
The people of Hong Kong are largely resistant to the tyranny of Communist China as their culture was based more on individual liberties and anti-communist sentiments. They embraced human rights such as free-speech and western values due to the fact that they were previously independent of mainland China and a former Colony of the British Empire.
During the period when mainland China took over Hong Kong, Freedom protestors took to the streets and waved American flags and sung the National Anthem of the United States.
The "zero-tolerance COVID" policy is their excuse to have zero tolerance for political dissent. It allows them to detain anyone they want in their so-called isolation centers, even if they have no symptoms. They can easily claim that they are "asymptomatic". This helps to keep watchful foreign media outlets from prying into their human rights violations.
One example of China's crack down on Hong Kong's political dissent is the case of Simon Cheng, a Hong Kong citizen and former employee of the British consulate, was detained in mainland China for 15 days on made-up charges of soliciting prostitution, which he was forced to confess under torture.
Speaking publicly for the first time, he said that he was tortured by Chinese police, who forced him to record another confession about a foreign plot to stir unrest in H