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ANNOUNCEMENT - Anime-style dungeon RPG Death end re;Quest Code Z arrives for Nintendo Switch as an Asian English edition in 2026! Full Story: 📣 Physical preorders open this Thursday, April 16th at 11pm Hong Kong time (11am ET / 8am PT / 4pm UK)!

11,297 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten •via X (Twitter)

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THIS INCREDIBLE REAL LIFE DETECTIVE STORY is still officially a mystery: so let's solve it today. Who blew up a planeload of Hong Kong passengers on their ways to a conference at which the Chinese premier was due to speak? In this report, on the 71st anniversary of that mass murder in April 1955, you and I are going to find the answer. . THE TIME BOMB At 1.26 pm on the 11th of April 1955, a plane bearing the name “Kashmir Princess” left Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport. Many of the passengers were journalists on a working trip to cover a meeting of Asian leaders, including Chinese premier Zhao Enlai and Indonesia’s Sukarno. But five hours later, air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, and it failed to arrive at its destination, Bandung, Indonesia. Investigators found that the plane had been carrying a time bomb – which exploded, sending the aircraft into the sea. One of only three survivors, Anant Karnik, told a horrific story of explosions, and the plane crashing, leaving him in the ocean surrounded by burning wreckage, flames 20 meters high. . ‘CAREFULLY PLANNED MASS MURDER’ Chinese civil servants said the mass killing was a joint operation by the United States and Taiwan. “This unfortunate incident was certainly not a usual aircraft accident, but a murder by the special service organizations of the United States and Chiang Kai-shek,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Americans dismissed the claim. No proof, they said. Investigations by British Hong Kong police and Indian detectives showed that a time bomb had been placed in the wheelbase of the aircraft at Kai Tak airport in what they described as “carefully planned mass murder”. . THE AIRCRAFT CLEANER A month later, on the 18th of May, Hong Kong police zeroed in on their chief suspect: a 34-year-old aircraft cleaner named Chow Tse-ming, known to have consorted with a Taiwanese spy in the city. But as they arrived arrest him, he vanished—and flew out of the city on a flight to Taiwan by an airline called Civil Air Transport. He could not be extradited, so British Hong Kong police were forced to close the case. . ‘NOTHING TO SEE HERE’ Several years later, a Senate committee heard that CIA bosses had suggested that an East Asian leader be assassinated “to disrupt an impending Communist Conference in 1955”. This was clearly the Bandung Conference, misrepresented. An assassination plan had been created but then dropped, CIA representatives said. So the Senate team moved on to discuss other issues. Nothing to see there. . DETAILS AT LAST But in 1977, retired CIA agent William Corson, who had worked in Hong Kong, revealed that the rumours of an assassination attempt were true and the target was China’s Zhao Enlai. A quarter of a century later, in 2004, the Chinese government’s 30-year declassification system triggered the release of a new batch of files. They confirmed that Premier Zhou Enlai had been booked to fly on that specific Air India plane, the Kashmir Princess, from Hong Kong, on that date. But Chinese agents had detected that the US had plans to assassinate him. He changed his plans, instead flying to Rangoon to meet the leaders of India and Burma, before travelling onwards to Bandung from a different direction. . SOLVING THE MYSTERY Let’s look back at the clues. As the plane’s pilots dined at Hong Kong airport on that day in 1955, a mysterious man approached them with questions about the flight. Suspicious, they sent him away. After recovering the wreckage, investigators noted that the bomb and the timing device were “Made in the USA”. Hong Kong police found out how much the airport cleaner had been paid – a huge sum, far more than a Taiwan spy could have afforded. In 1967, a retired CIA agent wrote a book of memoirs, recalling a mission to deliver explosives—for use on a Hong Kong flight in 1955. Most damning of all, investigators eventually learned that the entire airline on which the bomber had escaped, Civil Air Transport, was fake—it had been set up by the CIA to move staff around East Asia. Put these and other clues together, and our cold case is solved.

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16,357 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten

Today I’m going to tell you the strange story about how the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association went over to the dark side. The HKJA is in the news at the moment—for NOT telling its own members who’s running it. It’s pretty weird. If you go to their website and click to find out the names of the executive committee, you get this: “The Executive Committee has earlier decided not to publicise the list of Executive Committee members.” Odd, no? If there is ONE just one defining characteristic of journalists, it is that we love to see our names in print! So how can we be represented by a mystery group of people who are too shy to share their names?! . LOUD MEMBERS So who are they? Well, officially, no one knows. But Hong Kong does have a lively journalistic community, and they have worked out who are the dominant voices are in the organization. - There’s Selina Cheng who was famously sacked by the Wall Street Journal, which is not a Hong Kong newspaper. - There’s Danny Vincent who used to work for the BBC, which is not a Hong Kong news outlet. - There’s Mak Yin-Ting, freelance reporter for Radio France Internationale, which is not a Hong Kong radio station. - Then there is a Swiss photographer named Marc Progin, who achieved notoriety as the person who thoughtlessly shut a door, halting an innocent bank staff member’s journey, just before a violent protester who savagely attacked him. [vid clip provided] - The other person named is So Chun-yeung, a photographer for Channel WE, a new blog set up on the bones of Channel C, an online media outlet which collapsed in April, owing lots of unpaid salaries. These individuals may be very nice people. But do they epitomize the Hong Kong journalism community? These people who work for the infamous western mainstream media on the other side of the planet? Knowing the history of the HKJA is helpful. . 1. NO POLITICS The HKJA was founded in 1968 – by an Australian named Jack Spackman, who mainly worked for a Hong Kong newspaper called the China Mail. I knew him in the 1980s. The founder of the HKJA used to remind young journalists like me that we should report on political groups but never join them. (Yes, I was young once -- pic in the video.) The tall, thin, friendly Australian would say: “Leave politics to the politicians. But don’t let them get away with anything.” . 2. CIA ARRIVES Jack left Hong Kong in 1987. In 1989, various CIA and NED agents started long-term major operations in Hong Kong, with their usual modus operandi: setting up trade unions and groups to feed the media with the CIA's Three Weaponized Terms: freedom, democracy and human rights. In 1990, the NED started funding a new group called the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions. In 1994, the NED started funding another new group: the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor. And in the same period, the HKJA became a political body. I stopped going to the meetings when they were chaired by Emily Lau, tireless critic of China. . 3. TEAMING UP WITH THE N.E.D. In 2002, the two NED-financed groups in Hong Kong met with the Hong Kong Journalists Association and other groups to create a joint operation called the Civil Human Rights Front, to organize anti-China street protests and criticize the government. How did that fit with Spackman’s vision of “leaving politics to the politicians”? Another group joined the cluster – the Civic Party, which also went through a period of getting funding directly from the NED. . 4. 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Few people read it, no one advertised in it, and it was reportedly losing HK$600,000 a month. But what happened next WAS a surprise. It was relaunched a few months later as wealthy anti-China website called Stand News, anonymously financed. On its board was Denise Ho, associated with the Oslo Freedom Forum, later revealed by the BBC to be secret US-based organizer of protests in Hong Kong. [clip provided] Stand News overseas director was a man named Evan Fowler, who had co-founded a China-hostile website called the Hong Kong Free Press, home of the notorious yellowface hoaxer named Brian P. Kern. A Stand News reporter, Ronson Chan, became chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association from June 2021. After the bosses of Stand News closed it down, investigators found the website had a reserve cash account containing $8 million US dollars. Lot of spare cash for a blog with no functioning business model! 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When the western media say Hong Kong is dead, China killed Hong Kong, there’s no freedom in Hong Kong, all the freedoms have been lost – the HKJA’s job is to say YES. . A NEW CHAPTER? Good stories have Epilogues, so let’s have one Journalism is an important part of a community’s civic services. For too long, Hong Kong's civic sector has been dominated by people paid, often secretly, by the west, to drive the west’s political anti-China narrative. It’s time to recapture the original spirit of the HKJA. Real journalists, citizen journalists, young journalists, who’s with me? I can still hear the voice of Jack Spackman, the Australian founder of HKJA. “Leave politics to the politicians. But don’t let them get away with anything.” Peace.

Nury Vittachi

26,417 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat