Oh this is why the Government Lied about the Numbers of Protesters..

Awaiting a democratic Hong Kong

My government lied about how many people attended the protest today. They set the number to be a measly 63,000 when the organizers said there were 250,000. It's never been that much difference. Not even close. As a person who was there I truly felt it was exactly about half the size of the July 1st 2003 protest, which the numbers who turned up was 500,000 (More later about this) but it just occurred to me why it serves the government to make the number so low, because it helps the media to lie.

I just watched the ATV 24 hours news again, while when I got home they mentioned that the protest in Hong Kong had a discrepancy in reporting of the numbers, just now a few hours later that's completely disappeared. The news simply said, "Today's democratic Protest in Hong Hong the government announced the numbers attended was 63,000." That was it.

Nice...

I knew my government could do a lot of stupid things, but I never thought they would corroborate with the police to lie, and then the news media will just report their line.

This is not a good development at all.

Comments

[Andrea Chiu]

Not all news media just report the government line.

I wrote about the discrepency in today's issue of The Standard.

URL here: http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=4&art_id=7132&sid=5769926&con_type=1&d_str=20051205

[Andrew Lih]

Glutter and Andrea,

Clearly 63,000 is too low, since the Victoria Park was packed to capacity, and well known to hold 80,000. My estimate, as posted here:
http://www.chattergarden.com/node/889

puts it at between 100,000 and 150,000. But this was the estimate on Causeway Road near the library.

Here are some pictures too:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzheado/sets/1512555/

[Glutterbug]

Exactly. Plus is was packed to capacity STANDING....

[andrew]

glutter,

there are indepdent services that will count crowd size. you might consider hiring one. then you could have numbers with some some actual computerized count behind it to send to the media.

kind regards,
A

[Rob]

Well done Hong Kong!
I didn't see the numbers reported, just a TV picture on Sky showing a packed street - looked like the whole of HK had turned out.

A couple of quick thoughts
1. Doesn't matter what the reported figures are, the central government will know.
2. The bigger the underreporting of the numbers the more uncomfortable they are with the result. 250k under Tsang must be more significant than 500k under Tung.