Follow us on Telegram for the latest updates: https://t.me/mothershipsg
Two men in their 20s have been arrested by Hong Kong police for suspicion of disorderly conduct.
They had filmed themselves shooting police officers and members of the press with water guns during the city's annual Songkran celebration, before uploading the video to social media.
Wait, what?
Okay, let's break things down a bit.
Kowloon City is known as "Little Thailand" as it has a high concentration of Thai nationals in the area.
Because of this, it holds an annual Songkran celebration. Songkran is part of the celebrations for the Buddhist new year, and is often celebrated in Thailand with public water fights.
This tradition has been carried out by diaspora Thai communities as well, including in Singapore, but had been put on hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This year represents the first time since the pandemic that Little Thailand in Hong Kong has been able to celebrate Songkran in the traditional way.
Hong Kong Free Press, in its coverage of the event held on Apr. 9, a Sunday, showed several hundred people lining the streets, covered in raincoats and ponchos, armed with water guns and buckets, merrily taking part in festivities.
One picture even shows a pair of police officers ducking as they are splashed with water.
And so?
However, a video uploaded on Apr. 10 by the social media channel Bravedogdog, to both YouTube and Instagram, showed a group of men equipped with large water guns, spraying water at a different pair of police officers, eventually causing the police to disperse.
But the men, including one in a red shirt, continue to follow the police as they move into the crowd, all the while spraying them with water.
A caption in the top left hand of the screen reads "vs HK Po👮".
Image via Bravedogdog/YouTube
A later scene shows them shooting water at the faces of a pair of men in yellow ponchos marked "press", with the man in the red shirt walking right up to one of the members of the press and shooting him in the face with water.
Image via Bravedogdog/YouTube
The caption in the top left read "Diu7TvB" (f**k TVB) followed by the flag of China and a heart. TVB is considered to be a pro-government broadcaster in Hong Kong, according to the BBC.
The video shows the group following the members of press only to be confronted by a TV cameraman who seemingly tells them to stop.
The Standard translates subtitles appearing during this portion of video as saying "It is silly to obey him the more you don't allow me, the more I want to play".
Image via Bravedogdog/YouTube
Sleeping volcano
The Standard reported that the two men were arrested on Apr. 12 for disorder in a public place.
Secretary of Security Chris Tang said that the act of shooting police with a water gun and uploading the video were "soft resistance", which involved people using culture to "degrade the country" and incite dissatisfaction.
The New York Times quoted Police Inspector Cheung Lok-Chuen, who said that the two men had "targeted" police officers with the intent of breaching the peace, adding that the captions displayed throughout the video were "seditious" and "maliciously provocative".
The New York Times and the BBC both attributed the arrests to a desire to crack down on dissent in the city. The BBC said that under Hong Kong's "one country, two systems" principle, "residents are supposed to enjoy certain freedoms unavailable on the mainland".
Meanwhile, more pro-Beijing outlets, such as Ta Kung Pao, have decried the actions of the two men in an op-ed, saying that their act of (relatively) minor defiance, disturbed the peaceful state that Hong Kong is in, now that the "black violence" had ended.
Their actions, the op ed warned, risked waking a "sleeping volcano".
Story you might be interested in
Top image by Bravedogdog/YouTube