Shame on us for missing it (hey, we had our hands full), but big ups to the Facebook user who posted this excellent video of an anti-extradition demonstrator dressed in full Game of Thrones regalia following a pair of cops through Causeway Bay to the steady chant of “Shame! Shame!”
The act of cosplay protest, for those of you still not up to date with the zeitgeist of 2015, was a reference to a GoT episode in which Cersei Lannister is forced to walk, nude, from the Great Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep, all while being pelted with rotten vegetables, as penance for “the acts of falsehood and fornication,” to borrow the words of the High Sparrow. (Yeah, we’re nerds — what of it?)
Throughout the ordeal, she is followed by the dour, sadistic Septa Unella, who clangs a bell and monotonously repeats “Shame! Shame!”
While yesterday’s record-breaking march was ostensibly seeking the full withdrawal of a controversial bill allowing extraditions to mainland China, many also took the opportunity to vent their anger at police over their heavy-handed response to another anti-extradition protest last Wednesday.
To be fair, from what we could see, cops were on their best behavior yesterday, but on Wednesday, police in full riot gear fired over 150 rounds of tear gas — not to mention rubber bullets, pepper spray, and bean bag rounds — into a crowd of tens of thousands of largely nonviolent demonstrators.
The response drew widespread criticism, and, if anything, only served to further galvanize the bill’s opponents.
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