Unfree Speech by Joshua Wong review – a call to arms for the Snapchat generation

The Hong Kong protests leader, a veteran activist at just 23, on his extraordinary decade – and what comes next

By Tim Adams

Joshua Wong addressing the crowd in Hong Kong, 1 January 2020. 

I don’t know if it counts as a demographic anomaly or a new world order, but our social media decade has seen the emergence of teenage political changemakers – the guerrilla wing of influencer culture. 

While Greta Thunberg may have become the most recognisable of these adolescent activists, the model was established by Joshua Wong, who at the age of 14 engineered a rare political climbdown by the Hong Kong government, and by 17 was on the cover of Time magazine as “the Face of Protest”.
Wong, now 23, and having spent many months in prisons and detention centres, is the gnarled veteran leader of the “umbrella movement” against creeping Chinese authoritarianism. 

In a blurb to this book Thunberg describes him as “the future that has already come”. 

Wong’s story is not unlike Thunberg’s to the extent that a stubborn school-based protest that might have once been confined to the human-interest pages of the local newspaper quickly became first a national and then a global concern.
This book is a memoir of an extraordinary decade in which Wong went from a nerdy obsession with Marvel comics to a Netflix documentary in which he was characterised as a superhero for democracy. It is also a call to arms to that generation that has known nothing but Instagram and Snapchat – a manifesto to “follow news sites for warning signs of political polarisation”, to use “fact-checking media”, to get out from behind their screens “to attend rallies and help organise election campaigns” and to remember, above all, any effort to preserve democracy “starts with one voice, one flyer and one speech”.
Wong half-believes he was born to the role. 

His Christian parents, who married in the weeks after the Tiananmen Square massacre named him Joshua after the Old Testament hero of Jericho, bringing down walls with his trumpet solo. 

His mother recalls him babbling like an orator from birth, and dyslexia meant that he learned to be a speechmaker to prove his intelligence. 

His first protest movement was for an improvement in school dinners at the United Christian College in Hong Kong. 

He graduated quickly to organising against a new national curriculum, announced by the island’s government.

Joshua Wong at a US congressional hearing on China in September 2019.

Wong was part of the first school year to have been born after Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. 

The new curriculum, with its insistence on a “recognition of identity”, came with a manual that praised the Chinese Communist party as “an advanced and selfless regime” and argued that “toxic bipartisan politics” in the west led to the “suffering of its people”. 

Wong and his best mate, Ivan Lam, created a Facebook page outlining resistance to the curriculum and set up street stalls and staged small-scale sit-ins to channel protest.
By 2012, a tight group of friends had grown to 10,000 Scholarism followers; Wong spent nearly every evening after school giving soapbox speeches and press interviews. 

In July that year, he led a mass protest of 100,000 people and by August – just before a new term started – his activists occupied the Admiralty Square outside the government headquarters; Ivan Lam went on hunger strike. 

By day nine of the occupation, the government chief executive, CY Leung, withdrew the plans for the “brainwashing curriculum”.

That success was only the beginning for Wong. 

The next battle was over the government’s flaky commitment to the people’s right freely to elect its chief executive. 

Beijing’s backtracking on that promise in 2017 forced the Scholarism activists back out onto the streets. 

Admiralty Square had been fenced off, but in a rallying speech Wong called for supporters to scale the barrier. 

He was pulled down from the top of the fence by riot police. 

It was only when he was released on bail after 48 hours in solitary confinement that he got to see the news footage of the demonstration. 

The following day 200,000 protesters had descended on the square; when the police fired teargas into the crowd, many of the protesters had defended themselves with umbrellas – and a new movement had been born.
Ever since, Wong has been in and out of jail while the authorities have tried and failed to subdue the ongoing protests. 

Much of the second half of this book, which is sometimes written with the flattened tone of a court report or legal document, consists of Wong’s letters from prison, trying to keep up with events on the outside, while characteristically taking up causes on the inside, including a campaign to outlaw the prison practice of shaving inmates’ hair.
On his release Wong sought to use his platform to argue that what began as Hong Kong’s student protest is increasingly all of our concern. 

Hong Kong is in many ways the test case, his book insists, not just for China to try its authoritarian muscle but also as part of a “much broader threat to global democracy”. 

In May 2019 Wong returned to prison for seven weeks for violating a court injunction involving the umbrella movement, nearly 6,000 of whose number had by then been arrested. 

His greatest regret, he joked at the time, was that he would miss the latest Marvel Avengers film. Wong had watched its predecessor many times – and seen in its subtitle a lesson for superheroes, however modest, however young, the world over. 

“The ‘infinity war’ that has ravaged Hong Kong for years, I’m afraid, may be soon coming to a political theatre near you…”

• Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act Now by Joshua Wong is published by Penguin (£9.99) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837

'Hong Kong is at a crossroads': inside prison with the student who took on Beijing

Joshua Wong was 20 when he was sentenced in 2017 to six months for his role in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy ‘umbrella movement’

By Joshua Wong

Joshua Wong outside the legislative council in Hong Kong, 2017. 

DAY 2 Friday, 18 August 2017
The last words I said before I was taken away from the courtroom were: “Hong Kong people, carry on!”
That sums up how I feel about our political struggle.
Since Occupy Central – and the umbrella movement that succeeded it – ended without achieving its stated goal, Hong Kong has entered one of its most challenging chapters.
Protesters coming out of a failed movement are overcome with disillusionment and powerlessness.
The appeal sentencing of myself and my fellow umbrella leaders Nathan Law and Alex Chow has dealt yet another devastating blow to the morale of pro-democracy activists.
Even though it feels as if we have hit rock bottom, we need to stay true to our cause.
We must.
To my friends who have decided to walk away from politics, I hope my being here and writing you this letter will convince you to reconsider.
If not, our sacrifices will have been for nothing.
I miss my mum’s hand-brewed milk tea terribly, and the chicken hotpot at the street-food restaurant where my friends and I always hang out.
That’s the first place I’ll visit as soon as I’m out of here.
But at the moment, my biggest worry is the state of my political party.
Ever since Nathan and I co-founded Demosisto in April 2016 we’ve suffered a series of significant setbacks.
Four weeks ago, Nathan lost his hard-won seat at the legislative council (LegCo) after he and five other members were disqualified on the grounds that they had failed to properly recite their oaths during the swearing-in ceremony.
Nearly everyone is now out of a job, while half of our executive committee is behind bars, or will be in the coming weeks.

A pro-democracy demonstrator at Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, January 2020.

My message to the pro-Beijing camp? Don’t celebrate too soon.
I began my journey in 2012 when I led the campaign against the national education curriculum.
It’s been a tumultuous five years.
I didn’t shed a single tear when the judge announced my sentence, not because I was brave but because I wanted my supporters to embrace my loss of freedom as a necessary step on our collective path to democracy.
To quote JK Rowling’s Hagrid: “What’s coming will come and we’ll meet it when it does.”
Hong Kong is at a crossroads.
The ruling regime will stop at nothing to silence dissent.
For those who dare to stand up to them, the only way forward is together.
And tonight, alone in my cell, I ask you to keep your chin up and use your tears, anger and frustration as motivation to charge ahead. Hong Kong people, carry on!

DAY 3 Saturday, 19 August 2017
I’ve been assigned a two-person cell.
My cellmate seems friendly enough, although we didn’t have a chance to say much to each other before the lights went out.
So far the biggest source of discomfort is perhaps the bed.
In fact, calling it a bed is an over-statement.
It’s nothing more than a wooden plank with no mattress.
But, then again, if I could spend 79 nights sleeping on a highway during the umbrella movement I’m sure I can get used to this too.
Twice a day, the news is broadcast on the PA system.
This morning I was woken up by a story about Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong.
“Mr Patten told reporters that he was heartened by the sacrifices made by Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law, and that he believed these three names will be carved into history ...”
It felt surreal to hear my name mentioned.
The reality that I’m a convicted criminal has finally sunk in.

DAY 8 Thursday, 24 August 2017

Joshua Wong, the student who risked the wrath of Beijing: ‘It’s about turning the impossible into the possible’

I feel a little embarrassed about the enormous media attention that Alex, Nathan and I received last week.
Local newspapers plastered my picture on their front pages the day after I was sent to prison.
The reality is that countless others are being tried or are about to be tried in Hong Kong for their activism work.
Many face much harsher prison terms than we do.
Being phoneless is like having my limbs cut off or an itch I can’t scratch.

DAY 9 Friday, 25 August 2017
LegCo member Shiu Ka-chun, nicknamed “Bottle”, came to see me this morning.
I met him six years ago, when I was a 14-year-old secondary school student and he a social worker and radio presenter.
He later hosted some of my anti-national education rallies.
In the documentary Netflix made about me, Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower, there is a scene in which I appear on Bottle’s radio show and he asks if I have a girlfriend.
“My mum told me it’s too early for me to be dating,” I reply, and everyone in the studio bursts out laughing.
Neither of us would have guessed that five years later we would be talking to each other on different sides of a glass partition.

DAY 10 Saturday, 26 August 2017
A prison supervisor approached me this afternoon for a chat about recent news events.
He began by declaring himself to be an “independent”, and that he’s neither a “yellow ribbon” (a supporter of the umbrella movement) nor a “blue ribbon” (a supporter of the government and the police).
He asked me whether I had any regrets about entering politics and ending up behind bars, before launching into a 30-minute monologue on my conviction.
His point – if there was one: we all got what we asked for.

A protest march on 1 July 1 2017, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the city’s handover from British to Chinese rule.

DAY 11 Sunday, 27 August 2017
Like every other day since I arrived, a handful of inmates and I spent most of today sweeping the 2,000-sq ft canteen.
We clean after every breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Most twentysomethings in Hong Kong live with their parents and many middle-class households have a live-in maid.
My family is no exception.
I’ve never cleaned this much in my life and I keep telling myself that it’s good for my character.
Twice a day, a senior correctional officer visits the facility.
All inmates have to stand in a straight line with our chests out, make a fist with both hands, and stare, not straight ahead, but 45 degrees upwards.

DAY 15 Thursday, 31 August 2017
Today I had my first dreaded morning march.
I’m scrawny and spend nearly all my spare time playing video games and watching Japanese anime.I don’t go out much and I’ve never been athletic or particularly coordinated.
I’ll be lucky to get through the march without embarrassing or hurting myself.

DAY 18 Sunday, 3 September 2017
Three years ago, I joined hundreds of thousands of brave citizens in the largest political movement in Hong Kong’s history with the simple goal to bring true democracy to our city.
We asked to exercise our constitutional right to elect our own leader through a fair and open election. Not only did the Hong Kong government – appointed by Beijing and under its direction – ignore our demands, it also arrested and charged many of us with illegal assembly.
Until recently, the charge of unlawful assembly was used only to prosecute members of local gangs. In the past, the term “political prisoner” conjured up frightening images of dissidents in mainland China being rounded up and thrown into jail.
It’s hard to imagine that the term now also applies to Hong Kong.
As Beijing’s long arm reaches into every corner and threatens our freedoms and way of life, the number of prisoners of conscience is only going to increase.
Unfortunately, few foreign governments are willing to take on the world’s second largest economy and hold its actions to account.
For instance, I was disheartened by the latest Six-Monthly Report on Hong Kong published by the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.
Despite the political persecution of activists like me, he concluded that the “one country, two systems” framework was “working well”. 
As a signatory to the Sino-British joint declaration on Hong Kong, Britain has both a moral and a legal obligation to defend its former subjects and speak up on their behalf.

DAY 27 Tuesday, 12 September 2017
More than one inmate has asked me: “How much do they pay you to do your political stuff?”
At first I thought they just wanted to provoke me with accusations that I take money from foreign governments.
But I’ve slowly realised the questions are genuine.
Most people don’t understand why any sane person would risk prison to do what I do if it wasn’t for money.

DAY 41 Tuesday, 26 September 2017
Today is the third anniversary of my Civic Square siege, the event that set in motion the umbrella movement and a turning point in my life.
This time three years ago, I scaled a metal fence near the government headquarters and called on other protesters to follow me.
I was tackled by a dozen police officers and taken into custody.

Wong (left), with Alex Chow (centre) and Nathan Law outside Hong Kong’s court of final appeal, February 2018. 

DAY 66 Saturday, 21 October 2017
There’s a huge variety of political views here.
The younger prisoners tend to be yellow ribbons.
Several of them have opened up to me about their involvement in the umbrella movement and subsequent protests.
But there are plenty of hardcore blue ribbons too.
Yesterday someone from the security unit pulled me aside and told me that some older guys in the workshop had heckled me and yelled “Traitor” when I walked past.
I received letters from a few university classmates today.
We started in the same year and now they’re about to graduate.
By summer next year they’ll be starting their first jobs, moving ahead in life.

DAY 68 Monday, 23 October 2017
My last day in prison came and went like any other.
By the time I’m released I’ll have spent 69 days behind bars.
They represent an important milestone in my seven-year journey in political activism.
I’ll come out of prison stronger and more committed to our cause than ever.

* * *

In June 2019, on the heels of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, a controversial fugitive transfer arrangement with China tabled by the government set off a fresh round of protests.
It felt as if it was the umbrella movement all over again, except this time protesters were angrier and more combative.
Young people’s voices went from loud to deafening as they refused to be brushed aside as they had in 2014. Street demonstrations escalated quickly after million person marches failed to move politicians. Peaceful rallies soon gave way to full-scale urban guerrilla warfare.
A new cold war is brewing between China and the rest of the democratic world, and Hong Kong is holding the line in one of its first battles.
Nothing captures that tension more vividly than the moments on 1 October 2019 when live coverage of the 70th anniversary celebrations in Beijing were shown side by side with scenes of demonstrators braving teargas and throwing eggs at Xi Jinping’s portraits on the streets of Hong Kong.
The contrast sends a clear message to the world that China’s tightening grip on Hong Kong is part of a much broader threat to global democracy.
In May 2019, I went to prison for the second time. 
I spent seven weeks at Lai Chi Kok Correctional Institution for violating a court injunction during the umbrella movement.
I tried to comfort my parents and joked that my biggest regret was having to miss the opening night of Avengers: Endgame, the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War. 
Before I headed to prison, a foreign reporter asked me for a soundbite about my second incarceration and China’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in general.
I thought about the discussion I had with my parents and said: “This isn’t our endgame. Our fight against the CCP is an infinity war.”
The infinity war that has ravaged Hong Kong for years, I am afraid, may be coming soon to a political theatre near you.

• Edited extract from Unfree Speech by Joshua Wong and Jason Y Ng, published by WH Allen (RRP £9.99) on 30 January. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.

Hong Kong's fight for freedom

China can silence me. But it can’t silence Hong Kong’s movement.

By Joshua Wong

'It is a war here now.' In Hong Kong, what began as peaceful protests has become a de facto war about the future of democracy. 

This week I was deprived of the right to participate in Hong Kong’s political system.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong authorities barred me from running in local elections for district council. 

I was the only candidate barred. 

Laura Aron, the officer who made the decision, claimed that my nomination was invalid largely because of my affiliation with Demosisto, a pro-democracy party that I helped co-found. 

She said she did not believe I would uphold Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
In reality, the decision to target me was clearly politically driven, based on my role championing democratic rights in Hong Kong and engaging with the issue at an international level. 

This is nothing short of political screening and censorship.
In mid-October, I received two letters from Dorothy Ma, an officer who was screening my candidacy, asking me to “clarify” my political views. 

Though I had no desire to play along with attempts at censorship, I responded explaining my position and noting that authorities should not screen candidates. 

I did not hear back from Ma for a week. 

Then, when I finally visited Ma’s office, I was told she was on leave due to sickness and was being replaced by Aron. 

The replacement process lacked transparency and did not follow the normal practice of appointing an officer who worked under Ma or was from a neighboring district. 

Soon after, Aron announced the decision to bar me.
When I first decided to run for the district council position, I understood that Beijing might decide to thwart my candidacy. 

The decision, and the suspicious way it was made, exposes to the world just how much Hong Kong is already under Beijing’s authoritarian grip.
This is not the first time Hong Kong authorities have infringed on my political rights and those of my fellow activists. 

I myself have been placed in jail three times for my activism. 

After spending several months in prison this year for my role in the Umbrella Movement, I was released in June, but was arrested again in August alongside my colleague Agnes Chow for participating in the protests. 

Previously, the Hong Kong government disqualified six elected, pro-democracy legislators between 2016 and 2017.
This most recent outrage shows that Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have not learned from protests. 

The protesters are calling for Beijing to respect its own promise to allow Hong Kong a democratic system until 2047, under the “one country, two systems” policy. 

This was a chance for Hong Kong’s government to show it had heard the cries of Hong Kong’s young generation and to bring a youth voice into the district council.
But Beijing is not even willing to allow Hong Kong a short window of freedom. 

Along with recent crackdowns against demonstrators on the streets, this highlights once again the importance of the protesters’ five demands for the Hong Kong government: to fully withdraw the controversial extradition bill that triggered the protests; establish a commission to look into police brutality; retract the description of protesters as “rioters;” provide amnesty to those arrested in the protests; and commit to universal suffrage for electing the chief executive and entire Legislative Council until 2047.
This is a moment when the international community must speak up. 

In the United States, the House just passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. 

After learning of the news of my barring, several senators have called for its swift passage in the Senate, too. 

This is crucial. 

Three senators have also introduced the Hong Kong Be Water Act, which would sanction government officials responsible for cracking down on freedom of expression in Hong Kong. 

These actions would signal to Beijing that it should loosen its grip or face international pressure.
My candidacy may have been barred. 

But our movement continues — and this has only catalyzed more anger and frustration among young Hong Kongers hoping for change. 

My friend and colleague Kelvin Lam has bravely decided to run in my place. 

Angus Wong and Tiffany Yuen — who were staffers under Nathan Law, a lawmaker disqualified in 2017 at Beijing’s behest — are also running for office. 

I will spend the next few weeks campaigning for them, and will continue to push for human rights in Hong Kong going forward.
And on Nov. 24, Hong Kongers must vote to have their voices heard. 

The election is a referendum on Beijing’s actions, and an opportunity to show the strength of our will and stand up for our rights. 

Beijing can bar me from running, but I refuse to be silenced. 

Democracy begins on the ground — and China cannot silence us all.

Hong Kong Bars Joshua Wong, a Prominent Activist, From Seeking Election

Mr. Wong, a leader of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, had planned to run for a district council position amid widespread public anger with the government.
By Austin Ramzy and Elaine Yu

The democracy activist Joshua Wong speaking outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong on Tuesday, after being barred from running in district council elections next month.

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong authorities on Tuesday barred Joshua Wong, a prominent democracy activist, from running in district council elections next month, a blow to the protest movement’s efforts to convert deep anger toward the authorities into electoral gains.
The government cited statements by Mr. Wong’s political organization that the future of Hong Kong should be determined by its people, and independence is a possible option. 

An official said those statements were incompatible with the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, which states that the semiautonomous city is part of China.
“The candidate cannot possibly comply with the requirements of the relevant electoral laws, since advocating or promoting ‘self-determination’ is contrary to the content of the declaration that the law requires a candidate to make to uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance” to Hong Kong, the government said in a statement.
Mr. Wong said the decision showed that China’s central government was manipulating the election, which is expected to be a key test of public sentiment about the protest movement.
In a news conference outside the Hong Kong government headquarters, he called the decision to bar him “a political order that Beijing has handed down.”
Earlier he said that the official who made the decision had been relegated to a role as the “thought police.”
The district council elections, which will be held on Nov. 24, are usually focused on local issues such as bus stops and neighborhood beautification. 

But the race is taking on a broader political significance this year. 

Whichever side wins the most seats will control 117 votes in the 1,200-member election committee that chooses the next chief executive, Hong Kong’s top government position.
The pro-democracy camp’s fears of even wider prohibitions on their candidates seeking office have not been realized, as Mr. Wong will most likely be the only candidate barred from the district council race.
He said Tuesday that he hoped voters would support another candidate, Kelvin Lam, who had registered to run in the event of Mr. Wong’s disqualification.
Mr. Wong, 23, grew to international prominence as a student leader during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, when protesters occupied streets for weeks to push for freer elections. 

He was sentenced to short prison terms twice over the 2014 protests, and was still in custody in June when the current protest movement began.
The current protest movement began as a fight over a now-withdrawn extradition bill and has expanded its demands to include an investigation into use of force by the police and direct elections for the chief executive and the entire Legislative Council.
Unlike 2014, there are no widely known protest leaders. 

But Mr. Wong has remained a prominent participant and has been regularly attacked in the state-run Chinese media. 

In August, he and Agnes Chow, another 2014 protest leader who belongs to the same political group, Demosisto, were arrested on unauthorized assembly charges for a June 21 protest, when thousands of protesters surrounded police headquarters.
Ms. Chow was disqualified from running for the Legislative Council last year over similar questions of support for self-determination, including an option for independence. 

She won an appeal last month, with a judge ruling that she had insufficient opportunity to respond to the grounds for disqualification.
Ms. Chow said that ruling was a “Pyrrhic victory,” because it still upheld the ability of officials to disqualify candidates based on their political beliefs.
Mr. Wong had previously publicly shared his response to the official who disqualified him, Laura Aron, on Facebook on Saturday, where he argued that his advocacy remains within the bounds of the city’s Constitution.
“My position is that any decision on Hong Kong’s future should be carried out within the constitutional framework of ‘one country, two systems,’” he wrote. 

“Supporting democratic self-determination does not mean supporting Hong Kong’s independence from the central government of the People’s Republic of China.”
He added that comments two weeks ago by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping that any effort to divide the country would end in failure showed the futility of upholding such a position.
When Mr. Xi “threatened in strong terms that ‘anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones,’ I believe that in reality Hong Kong independence cannot become an acceptable option,” Mr. Wong wrote.
Ms. Aron wrote in her decision that by referring to Mr. Xi’s comments, Mr. Wong suggested that “both Demosisto and he were pressed into saying that they have given up the notion as a compromise, instead of a genuine intention.”

Hongkongers nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Norwegian lawmaker Guri Melby has nominated the people of Hong Kong for a Nobel Peace Prize.
By Tom Grundy

Norwegian lawmaker Guri Melby

“I have nominated the people of Hong Kong, who risk their lives and security every day to stand up for freedom of speech and basic democracy, to the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020. I hope this will be further encouragement to the movement,” Guri Melby, a politician for Norway’s Liberal Party, said on Twitter.


Guri Melby@gurimelby
I have nominated the people of Hong Kong, who risk their lives and security every day to stand up for freedom of speech and basic democracy, to the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 I hope this will be further encouragement to the movement: #StandWithHongKong https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/opPBrR/partiformannen-truer-med-aa-knuse-dem-og-male-beina-deres-til-stoev-naa-er-de-nominert-til-nobels-fredspris …

Partiformannen truer med å knuse dem og male beina deres til støv. Nå er de nominert til Nobels...
– Jeg håper at dette kan være en oppmuntring til å fortsette kampen på en ikkevoldelig måte, sier stortingspolitikeren Guri Melby (V). Hun har akkurat nominert Hongkong-befolkningen til neste års...aftenposten.no
7,447
14:58 - 15 Oct 2019

“The importance of what they are doing extends far beyond Hong Kong, both in the region and in the rest of the world,” she told newspaper Aftenposten.
City-wide protests against a soon-to-be-scrapped extradition bill have entered their 19th week, as wider anger over police misconduct and demands for democracy engulf the movement.

Melby said she wanted to encourage the movement and urge Hongkongers to continue the fight in a non-violent manner: “I specify that the nomination goes to the movement that is making these demonstrations happen. I was in Hong Kong last week, and people I spoke to there really emphasized that this is a social movement,” she told the newspaper.
Melby was barred from entering the Norwegian parliament in May after donning a t-shirt featuring the Chinese characters for “freedom” during a visit to the country by Chinese Politburo Standing Committee member Li Zhanshu.


Guri Melby@gurimelby
I forrige uke ble han arrestert av politiet da han stod fremst blant demonstrantene. I dag møtte jeg Ted Hui her i Hongkong, folkevalgt for Venstres søsterparti The Democratic Party. Vi snakket om hvorfor folket tar til gatene mot myndighetene, og desperasjonen mange føler på.

96
16:56 - 23 Sep 2019

Last year, twelve United States lawmakers nominated activists Joshua Wong, Nathan Law, Alex Chow and the Umbrella Movement for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Amid gleaming skyscrapers, Hong Kong's poor set aside hardships and join protests

Hong Kong's poor find a place among the protests
By Poppy McPherson and Felix Tam

Lou Tit-Man, 73, eats dinner outside Mong Kok Police Station in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019.

Just before midnight in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district, a slight man in his seventies peels away from a crowd of protesters jeering at police. 

Behind him, a young woman calls out, "Be safe!"
They make an improbable pair: she a smartly dressed 24-year-old; he an elderly activist who has for decades been sleeping on the streets of one of the wealthiest – and most unequal – cities on earth.
Bringing the two together is a movement that began in June with protests against a bill that would have allowed extradition to mainland China. 

The proposed legislation has since been withdrawn.
The demonstrations have since spiraled into a struggle over the future of the Chinese-ruled city that has drawn people from a broad cross-section of society. 

Some live on the breadline, but they have set aside their grievances to support a movement they hope will secure a better future for all.
"Even though we are poor, we still support the five demands," said the 73-year-old, Lou Tit-Man, referring to a five-point agenda that includes calls for universal suffrage and for hundreds of arrested protesters to be pardoned.
While others organize on encrypted apps like Telegram, Lou Tit-Man follows news of the demonstrations on his shortwave radio, one of the few possessions he has managed to keep from thieves, along with a mask picked up after one scuffle.
Known locally as "Iron Man", a play on his Chinese name and reputation for resilience, he spent four months in jail during the 2014 Umbrella Movement that paralyzed the city but failed to win major concessions from Beijing.
In his shirt pocket he carries a crumpled copy of an article about him in a local newspaper, relating how he spent his government subsidies to buy food and water for the mostly young protesters.
"I want the next generation to have a better life," he said, 

"I put all my heart and soul into the social movement."
This year's rallies have brought thousands of people onto the streets weekend after weekend, shouting slogans like "stand with Hong Kong" and "revolution of our time" that express a growing discontent with what is seen as creeping Chinese interference in the city.
The government has called for dialogue and said it is willing to "take forward constitutional development" in accordance with the law.
Recent demonstrations have often erupted into violence, with black-clad protesters setting fires and vandalizing metro stations as police fired tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannon.
More turmoil is expected ahead of Oct 1., when Beijing plans lavish celebrations to mark 70 years of the People's Republic.
Authorities describe the participants as "rioters" controlled by external instigators. 

A recent police tally of the hundreds arrested showed the youngest was 13, the eldest in their eighties.
Many taking to the streets are students, but others are teachers, pilots, nurses, chefs and cleaners and workers from the poorest districts of the city. 

They include rough sleepers and residents of the crowded subdivided flats that stand in the shadows of skyscrapers.

ECONOMIC WOES
While much of the anger driving the protests stems from political grievances – especially over the implementation of the "one country, two systems" agreement under which Hong Kong was handed back to China, promising a high degree of autonomy – analysts say it also has roots in economic woes.
A survey by a local university found 84 per cent of protesters said they were angry about class inequality and 92 per cent thought the wealth gap was unreasonable.
Graffiti laments the prohibitive cost of housing – the most expensive in the world – and the issue was raised in a community dialogue with Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Thursday night.
The city of 7.4 million, built up from a fishing village by British colonizers in the pursuit of wealth, is now home to more billionaires than any other in the world barring New York, but one in five of its people live in poverty.

Lou Tit-Man, 73, writes a protest sign outside Mong Kok police station in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019. The sign reads ''blood for blood''.

Lou Tit-Man, 73, walks in Mong Kok in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019.

Lou Tit-Man, 73, reacts in front of a Lennon Wall outside Mong Kok police station in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019.

Lou Tit-Man, 73, takes a nap in a park in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019.

Lou Tit-Man, 73, looks at his watch at Mong Kok in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019.

Lou Tit-Man, 73, stretches himslef at Mong Kok in Hong Kong, China September 23, 2019.

Income inequality recently reached its highest level in more than four decades, according to government data.
In Sham Shui Po, the poorest of Hong Kong's districts, parks are crowded with men sleeping on mattresses or benches. 

Many are elderly and in poor health, with rashes and bone-thin limbs. 

Nearby, women push fluffy dogs in prams.
"The affluent people just take everything from poor people," said Lou Tit-Man, who sleeps in a rough neighborhood where he said he has been beaten up by members of Chinese triads, or gangs.
"In the long-term I want Hong Kong to become an equal society," he said.
Ng Wai Tung, a social worker, said the city's "sky-rocketing rent" was fuelling homelessness and a housing crisis the government was failing to tackle.
An acute housing shortage means people wait, on average, at least five years for public housing. 

Most young people live with their parents and more than 200,000 are packed into subdivided units, known as "coffin cubicles" and "cage homes", for which they pay the equivalent of more than $500 per month.
Authorities vowed to build 280,000 public flats by 2027 but have said they will fall short of that goal.
Lam said on Friday she would focus on solutions to the crisis in her upcoming policy address, which normally takes place in October.

PILLAR OF OUR SOCIETY
"If the government really wanted to help me, I wouldn't have to work two jobs and live in a subdivided area," said 60-year-old Ip, a cleaner at a university, who moved to Hong Kong from mainland China in her thirties.
She pays $5,000 ($637) a month for a dark room in Sham Shui Po which barely fits the bed she shares with her husband, who is ill and cannot work. 

The roof leaks.
She formed tight bonds with students after taking part in the 2014 demonstrations, to the chagrin of her husband and family.
"There were some protesters that I didn't know who treated me so well. They chatted with me and were very peaceful," she said.
"These young people were beaten by the police ... They were willing to sacrifice themselves to safeguard a better future for Hong Kong."
Her parents in the mainland tell her she has been brainwashed by foreign forces. 

But when she visits them in Guangdong province, and sees them glued to state TV coverage of the protests, she thinks it is they who are misinformed.
"I keep arguing with people who don't support the students," she said. 

"They are the most important pillar of our society. I must help them."
Outside the police station in Mong Kok, the crowd watches as Lou Tit-Man scrawls slogans like, "Stop police brutality" and "Step down, Carrie Lam". 

He writes the messages on scraps of paper he finds on the street and puts them up near the station.
Every night, the police clear the area. 

"Afterwards I will make new ones," he said with a grin.

'Burn with us': How police brutality pushed young Hong Kongers to the edge

More and more Hongkongers considered radical protests to be more effective in making the government heed public opinion
By Joshua Berlinger and Eric Cheung
Protesters light a Molotov cocktail after setting a makeshift barricade on fire on August 31.

Hong Kong -- Jim bent over, collapsed and started crying.
The 16-year-old didn't want to abandon the injured man next to him.
He applied gauze to stop the man's eye from gushing with blood, but he still was having trouble walking.
Jim tried to carry him, but only made it a few feet.
Clouds of tear gas were closing in.
Rubber bullets had been flying overhead.
The teenager's hours of first aid work on the front line had taken their toll.
Physically he couldn't carry the wounded man any more.
All he could do was cry.

Police clash with protesters during a demonstration outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong on June 12.

It was June 12.
Jim had never previously been to a protest.
Hours earlier, when he volunteered to help treat the injured, he had no idea that he'd be in the thick of what turned out to be a dangerous encounter with Hong Kong police.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets that day to oppose a controversial bill that would have legalized extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China.
The bill was inspired by the city's inability to return the suspect of a grisly murder to Taiwan, but many Hong Kong citizens feared it would be abused by Beijing for political persecution.

Protesters move barricades to block a street during the June 12 protest.

Prior to June 12, Jim said he wasn't political.
He was a high school student who liked to play the violin.
The son of two medical professionals, he had aspirations to one day be a doctor.
A demonstration, he thought, would be a good opportunity to put some first-aid training to use.
The rally was given permission by authorities.
But by mid-afternoon a number of protesters decided to storm the entrance of the city's legislature despite the heavy police presence.
Police declared the protest a riot and used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.
Jim spent about three hours treating the wounded and said what he saw changed him.
He thought the Hong Kong police had used disproportionate and "unreasonable force."
Jim could barely sleep that night and when he did, he had nightmares.
He had an exam the next day but said his brain "was totally empty."
He sat down at his desk, rested his head on the table and slept.

Protesters run after police fired tear gas outside government headquarters on June 12.

Thousands of young people like Jim have spent the summer on the front lines of Hong Kong's longest sustained protests since the city returned to China in 1997.
Their movement started in opposition to the bill but quickly snowballed into a grassroots, decentralized crusade for universal suffrage and independent inquiries into alleged police misconduct.
They want to be able to able to choose their own leader, who is currently appointed by a Beijing-dominated panel.
The scenes have grown increasingly violent throughout the summer.
The streets of one of the safest cities in the world now regularly become battlegrounds with police firing rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse illegal demonstrations.

Hong Kongers' 5 demands

1. Fully withdraw the extradition bill
2. Set up an independent inquiry to probe police brutality
3. Withdraw the characterization of protests as "riots"
4. Release those arrested at protests
5. Implement universal suffrage in Hong Kong

Protesters say they have become numb to the chaos.
Many have become increasingly prone to violence.
Those who spoke to CNN about their experiences did so on the condition of anonymity, fearing that they'd be targeted by police or pro-government mobs.
Jim said for him, June 12 was the turning point.
He decided it wasn't enough just to volunteer first aid.
It was time to get in on the action, even though he had never been involved in politics or been in a fight.
He thought he needed to take a stand against what the police had done.

A police water cannon drives toward protesters on August 25.

July 1
On July 1, at 3 a.m. Jim snuck out of his parents' flat to meet the friends he'd be protesting with.
He was "excited and a little bit nervous."
"I was thinking that this time I will be with the guys who are standing on the front lines," Jim said. He wasn't just going to give first aid on the sidelines this time.
The day would end with part of the government's headquarters in ruin and tear gas in the streets, scenes previously considered unthinkable in Hong Kong.
Jim had become part of a "team" of about 20 protesters.
Small cells have become commonplace in the leaderless protest movement and replaced traditional top-down organization.
People join groups that decide what to do based on online chatter on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, and an online forum called LIHKG that works like Reddit.
This makes it harder for authorities to track protesters and jail their leaders, a strategy often referred to here as "cutting off the head of the snake."
Jim joined his cell after meeting a member of the team, who according to Jim, seemed brave, eloquent and persuasive.
They all met up early in the morning on July 1, the anniversary of when Hong Kong was handed from Britain to China in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" framework that allowed the city more freedoms and its own legal system.
That arrangement is due to expire in 2047, when Hong Kong will come under Beijing's direct rule.


Passengers look out from a bus at a burning barricade lit by pro-democracy protesters during a gathering in front of Mong Kok police station on Sunday, September 22, in Hong Kong.

Pro-democracy protesters have continued demonstrations across Hong Kong, calling for the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam to immediately meet the rest of their demands, including an independent inquiry into police brutality, the retraction of the word riot to describe the rallies, and genuine universal suffrage, as the territory faces a leadership crisis.
Before this year, pro-democracy protesters had peacefully marched each year on July 1 to mark the occasion.
"Protest is ingrained in the Hong Kong psyche. It's just a very normal thing to do," said Leslie, a 24-year-old protester and former English teacher.

Leslie isn't her real name. 

She asked that CNN change it due to fears of reprisals.
In 1997, 2047 was a long way off for a teenager. 

They'd likely be retired by then. 

But Jim and Leslie will be in their 40s and 50s, respectively. 

"The future of Hong Kong really depends on the next few months, maybe the next few years, and how this movement pans out," Leslie said.
With that in mind, more than 500,000 turned out for this year's July 1 rally which begins at Victoria Park each year, according to organizers' estimates.
Yet that's not where Jim and his team went. 

They met in Admiralty, outside the government's headquarters.
Calvin was already there by the time Jim arrived. 

The 18-year-old university student had spent the night sleeping on the ground nearby, with only a power bank to charge his phone and the clothes on his back. 

He wanted to be one of the first protesters there.

Protesters stand behind barricades outside the government headquarters the morning of July 1.

As the day went on, thousands more arrived.
People dressed in black and with masks covering their faces began pulling railings from the sidewalks to use as barricades. 

Some started to dig up bricks from the walkways. 

Calvin said that at about 2 p.m., a few proposed breaking into the government's legislative complex, known as LegCo.
At first, Calvin didn't think it was a good idea. 

His instinct was to push back against violence and destruction. 

And he didn't think the public would support it.
Neither did Jim. 

He didn't think violence was the answer.
"I've never seen this kind of stuff before," he said he thought at the time.
But both ended up doing what teenagers often do. 

They followed their friends.
"They're still my teammates," Jim said. 

"Whatever they do, I won't walk away."
Some of Calvin's friends were at the front, trying to break the glass doors leading into LegCo. 

He chose a middle ground: stand guard with an umbrella as other protesters smashed the doors with makeshift battering rams.

Protesters attempt to break a window at the government headquarters in Hong Kong on July 1.

Police standing inside the government headquarters look at protesters who tried to smash their way into the building.

With every violent push, the protesters chipped away at the barriers standing in their way. 

A handful of police officers stood on the other side of the glass. 

They warned people to stop or they would use force.

Protesters smash glass doors and windows to break into the parliament chamber of Legislative Council Complex on July 1.

By 9 p.m., the crowd finally made it inside. 

The police had vanished. 

Hundreds of protesters stormed in, cheering, waving their hands and celebrating their victory. 

They spray-painted "HK Gov f**king disgrace" on the wall.
"Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our time," they chanted.
Many thought protesters went too far by ransacking government property. 

Hong Kong is famously clean, efficient and safe. 

It boasts one of the world's lowest violent crime rates. 

Wanton destruction, mob violence and that level of vandalism are incredibly rare.
But as Calvin set foot in the building, he said he felt inspired.
With a successful strike at the symbolic heart of Hong Kong's unelected leader, Carrie Lam, Calvin thought the protesters were able to make an important point -- that the government has already lose its legitimacy.
Once they reached the building's second floor, some started battering the entrance to the legislative chamber. 

It took them 30 minutes to get in. 

Once inside, one protester ripped apart a copy of the Basic Law, which acts as Hong Kong's mini-constitution. 

Another climbed up and spray-painted the city's emblem in black. 

Then they erected the British colonial flag.

Scenes inside the occupied LegCo.

Jim stayed inside for about 45 minutes, helping those who were spraying some of the graffiti that would become symbols of the protesters' anti-government fury. 

Then news that police had warned of an impending clearance operation circulated through LegCo, which was trashed by this point.
"Everyone was scared," Jim said.
Protesters like Jim left on their own terms. 

But his team learned on Telegram that four protesters had stayed. 

So Jim and his friends chose to join hundreds of others who went back inside to convince those who remained to leave.
Everyone departed minutes before riot police arrived, firing tear gas toward the retreating crowd.
Jim felt like he belonged. 

At that moment, strangers felt like family.
"Even though we don't know each other, we have the same goal ... we can't leave anyone behind," Jim said.
"I nearly cried because it felt very touching."

Police fire tear gas at protesters near the government headquarters on July 2.

Joining the fight
Bobo watched the events of July 1 and June 12 unfold from Canada, where she was attending university.
The 20-something Hong Kong native had a cute little dog and hoped to stay in the country once she graduated. Maybe she'd teach children. 

For now, she liked to grab drinks with friends at night and play bar games. 

Darts was one of her favorites.
But she was enraged watching police fire rubber bullets at protesters.
"I cannot just study overseas without coming back to join this fight," she recalled thinking.
So in early July, Bobo left her beloved toy poodle with a friend and booked a ticket home to Hong Kong. 

She began administering a group on Telegram called Bobo, which means "baby" in Cantonese, and grew it into one of the biggest and most reliable Hong Kong protest channels -- with nearly 30,000 members to date.
On the group, she sends regular updates about gatherings, police movements and other real-time news. 

She asked that CNN not use her real name and just refer to her as Bobo, fearing that police would target her.
Bobo supported the protesters who stormed LegCo on July 1. 

She called them heroes.
Their actions, she said, were "a symbol to tell the others" that Hong Kongers would not accept the current government.
Bobo has a history of political activism. 

She -- and Calvin -- were both involved in the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement, when protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong seeking universal suffrage.
Those peaceful protests simply fizzled out without achieving any political change after the government waged a slow war of attrition. 

Many of the movement's top leaders were eventually jailed.
Calvin and Bobo both said they were angry after the so-called Umbrella Revolution ended. 

They had given peace a chance. 

Now it was time for something else, and many others agreed.
A series of on-site surveys of protesters conducted in June by several Hong Kong-based academics found that about half of the respondents "believed that peaceful, rational and non-violent protest was no longer useful."
"More and more participants considered radical protests to be more effective in making the government heed public opinion," it said.
Edmund Cheng, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University and one of the report's authors, said the research shows that even those who aren't thrilled about violence aren't going to stand in others' way.
"They may not approve of the violent actions of a small group of radical protesters, they still consider them as working toward a common goal," Cheng said.
The attack at LegCo on July 1 was a landmark moment for Hong Kong and its young people. 

The stage was set, and the summer was about to get more violent.

People walk past signs and posters outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong on July 2.
As the weeks turned to months, protesters graduated from throwing water bottles and umbrellas at riot police to bricks and Molotov cocktails. 

Police said rioters threw as many as 100 petrol bombs during the final weekend of August.
Protesters frame militancy as a necessary evil. 

They say their violence is only directed toward police and government. 

It's a far cry from lethal force and is escalated only if police escalate first, they say.

A Molotov cocktail is thrown by protesters in August.

Bobo and other protesters say Molotov cocktails and fire barricades are used to delay authorities and help protesters hold a line as others flee.
"We use them for self-defense, to maintain a distance between ourselves and the police. We all knew that we would be beaten up heavily if police were to come over," Bobo said.
On August 12 and 13, protesters stormed Hong Kong's airport. 

Hundreds of flights were canceled and chaos ensued. 

Two mainland Chinese nationals were detained by a mob on the second day. 

They were accused of being undercover officers. 

The mob stopped first responders from getting one of the men to an ambulance after he appeared to lose consciousness.
The second, who turned out to be a reporter for Chinese state media, was aggressively searched and then ziptied to a luggage cart.
Many protesters made an effort the next day to apologize.
"People are desperate, people are hopeless, so they want to try all the means possible that lead to victory," said Andy Chan, an independence advocate and the founder of the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP), which the government banned on national security grounds last year. 

Critics say the move was politically motivated.
"Things may turn ugly sometimes but the crowd is always be able to self correct," he said of the scenes at the airport.
Chan was arrested twice last month, first on charges of possession of offensive weapons and then for alleged protest-related offenses. 

He denied the weapons allegations in an interview with CNN before his second arrest.
His second arrest happened at the airport while he was on his way to a conference in Japan. 

Chan said he was then held 44 hours before being released on bail. 

He has not been formally charged and no court date has been set, but police are investigating the case.
Chan said that he believes it's time for protesters to fight back against increasingly heavy-handed tactics by police.
"In the past few years, we have experienced the violence of the police. Many of us agreed that we need to self-defend against the police," he said.

Protesters set a fire on August 31.

Almost all the protesters who spoke to CNN said this summer has changed the way they feel about police. 

Nearly every one brings up the incident in the suburb of Yuen Long on July 21, when police looked the other way while a mob beat up protesters and passersby at a subway station. 

Several said they now hated the police. 

Others spoke in even more vitriolic terms.
"When you go to school and you're very young, the teachers teach you that if you need help, you call the police," Jim said. 

"No one trusts the police anymore."
Leslie, the 24-year-old English tutor, expressed a similar sentiment. 

When it comes to violence, she said protesters will lose public support if they're seen as the ones escalating against police.
"Things that may be morally inappropriate may be necessary," she said.
"Nothing will change if the current situation continues."
Bobo went even further. 

"I will not cut ties with them even if someone kills a police officer," she said.
Bobo said that before this summer she trusted the police.
"But at this moment, they are worse than dogs. They are even worse than rats crossing the street," she said.
"Anyone with (a) conscience will not stay inside the police force. You are not a good person if you decide to stay."
The most extreme protesters want this to go further -- they want to take on the Chinese military. They're not scared by reports that the People's Armed Police, a paramilitary force, had been temporarily deployed across the border in Shenzhen. 

Nor are they worried about Beijing and Hong Kong sounding the alarm over "signs of terror."
They've embraced a philosophy of "if we burn, you burn with us," a phrase popularized by "The Hunger Games" books.

Graffiti outside Hong Kong's Tung Chung subway station reads "burn with us."

'It's just like a dream'
Bobo now goes to as many demonstrations as she can. 

Sometimes she's up until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. keeping the Telegram channel up to date. 

She wakes up for work three hours later and goes to her desk job.
Nowadays, Bobo brings a will to protests should she be killed. 

In it, she calls on her fellow protesters to continue the fight.
"Every time when I go out, I worry that I may die," she said. 

"I worry about (losing my future), but I am more scared that Hong Kong will be lost."
Leslie, Jim and Calvin said they've been to most of the protests. 

All three say they're motivated not just by ideology, but by the camaraderie they find on the front lines. 

Protesters liken themselves to brothers and sisters in arms, fighting for freedom together despite not knowing one another. 

Many often say one day they hope they can take off their masks and embrace one another.
For now, Calvin said it's like he's living a double life. 

"I go to the protest, and it's just like a dream, and when I wake up, it just ends," he said.
Leslie quit her tutoring job to fully commit to the cause. 

When she's not at a demonstration, she's helping with the translation and publication of protest materials.
"I can't really remember what it was like in June now," she said.
For many protesters, the summer has taken an emotional toll. 

Leslie now goes to a demonstration expecting tear gas and rubber bullets. 

Much of the time, she said she's numb to the violence.
"But the amount of times I've broken down says I just haven't found the right outlet for expressing my emotions," she said.
Jim, the high school student, no longer fears taking on the police.
At a protest at the end of August, he said he found himself on the ground staring at a police baton after helping up a fellow protester who had fallen over.
A member of the Hong Kong police's Special Tactical Squad was standing over him, he recalled.

A police officer from the Special Tactical Squad, nicknamed the "raptors," arrests a protester on August 11.

These aren't your average police. 

They dress in black, head to toe, and it's their job to go in and aggressively pluck out protesters for arrest after riot police fire tear gas. 

The squad has earned a reputation for violence, so much so that they're known locally as "raptors."
As Jim locked eyes with this raptor, he vowed not to go down without a fight. 

Rioting convictions can carry up to 10 years in prison. 

He didn't want to spend his formative years behind bars.
"I just wanted to get away," he said.

An officer walks in the Tung Chung subway station on September 1.

First he went for the jugular. 

Jim said he grabbed the raptor's throat, only to find he was wearing protective neck gear.
So he went lower. 

Jim said he kicked the raptor in the groin, causing him to keel over in pain and giving the young protester enough time to make a run for it.
In the seconds he made his getaway, Jim said he saw a protester throw a Molotov cocktail.
People cheered. 

Police drew back, Jim said, effectively ensuring he was able to escape.
But that freedom wouldn't last.
Jim and several members of his team were arrested days later for possession of offensive weapons. Jim said all they had on them were a few laser pointers. 

Police have started classifying laser pointers as weapons because they've been used at demonstrations to distract officers and members of the media, but they can also blind people.
Jim called his arrest "unreasonable." 

He has since been bailed out.
The summer's events have surprised even Jim. 

In mere weeks, he transformed from apolitical student who just wanted practice first-aid to a passionate activist and frontline protester with a rap sheet.
"Before these events happened, I think actually I'm not quite important or political. Like, I'm just a student and I can't do anything on my own," he said.
"Now I know that everyone is very important, and when we have a lot of people joining together, we can be very powerful."

Hong Kong Geheime Staatspolizei

Amnesty calls on Hong Kong to investigate police action in protests

By Anne Marie Roantree in Hong Kong

HONG KONG, Sept 24 -- Amnesty International on Tuesday urged the Hong Kong government to investigate police use of force during nearly four months of protests, and to encourage Beijing to safeguard protesters' right to peaceful assembly.
Many peaceful protests have degenerated into running battles between black-clad protesters and police, who have responded with tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds and several live rounds fired into the air.
Police has also been seen savagely beating protesters on the ground with batons.

"Ordering an independent and effective investigation into police actions would be a vital first step," Joshua Rosenzweig, head of Amnesty's East Asia regional office, said in a report.
"Authorities need to show they are willing to protect human rights in Hong Kong, even if this means pushing back against Beijing's 'red line'."
In 2017, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping warned in a speech marking the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Beijing that any attempt to undermine China's sovereignty was a "red line" that would not be tolerated.
What started as protests over a now-shelved extradition bill that would have allowed anti-China suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial have evolved into broader calls for greater democracy and an independent inquiry into police actions.
Activists are also frustrated by what they see as Beijing's tightening grip over the former British colony that was returned to China under a "one country, two systems" arrangement in 1997.
In a direct challenge to Communist Party rulers in mainland China, protesters have targeted Beijing's representative office in Hong Kong, thrown bricks outside the Chinese People's Liberation Army base and set fire to the Chinese flag.
The Asian financial centre is on edge ahead of the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China on Oct. 1, with authorities eager to avoid scenes that could embarrass the central government in Beijing.
Hong Kong also marks the fifth anniversary this weekend of the start of the "Umbrella" protests, a series of pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014 that failed to wrestle concessions from Beijing.

A Cantopop star publicly supported Hong Kong protesters. So Beijing disappeared his music

By AUGUST BROWN

Hong Kong pop singer Anthony Wong Yiu-ming photographed in New York City. The outspoken Wong is touring the U.S. amid continued pro-democracy protests back home.

The 2 million pro-democracy protesters who have flooded the streets of Hong Kong over the last few months have been tear-gassed, beaten by police and arrested arbitrarily. 

But many of the territory’s most famous cultural figures have yet to speak up for them. 

Several prominent musicians, actors and celebrities have even sided with the cops and the government in Beijing.
The protesters are demanding rights to fair elections and judicial reform in the semiautonomous territory. 

Yet action film star Jackie Chan, Hong Kong-born K-pop star Jackson Wang of the group GOT7 and Cantopop singers Alan Tam and Kenny Bee have supported the police crackdown, calling themselves “flag protectors.” 

Other Hong Kong cultural figures have stayed silent, fearing for their careers.
The few artists who have spoken out have seen their economic and performing prospects in mainland China annihilated overnight. 

Their songs have vanished from streaming services, their concert tours canceled. 

But a few musicians have recently traveled to America to support the protesters against long odds and reprisals from China.
“Pop musicians want to be quiet about controversy, and on this one they’re particularly quiet,” said Anthony Wong Yiu-ming, 57, the singer and cofounder of the pioneering Hong Kong pop group Tat Ming Pair.
Wong is a popular, progressive Cantopop artist — a Hong Kong Bryan Ferry or David Bowie, with lyrics sung in the territory’s distinct dialect. 

But he, along with such singer-actors as Denise Ho and Deanie Ip, have made democratic reforms the new cause of their careers, even at the expense of their musical futures in China. 

Wong’s on tour in the U.S. and will perform a solo show in L.A. on Tuesday.
“It’s rebelling against the establishment, and [most artists] just don’t want to,” Wong said. 

“Of course, I’m very disappointed, but I never expected different from some people. Freedom of speech and civil liberties in Hong Kong are not controversial. It’s basic human rights. But most artists and actors and singers, they don’t stand with Hong Kongers.”

Hundreds of people form a human chain at Victoria Peak in Hong Kong on Sept. 13.

The protests are an echo — and escalation — of the Occupy Central movement five years ago that turned into a broad pro-democracy effort known as the Umbrella Movement. 

Those protests, led by teenage activist Joshua Wong (no relation), rebelled against a new policy of Beijing pre-screening candidates for political office in Hong Kong to ensure party loyalty.
Protesters were unsuccessful in stopping those policies, but the movement galvanized a generation of activists.
These latest demonstrations were in response to a proposed policy of extraditing suspected criminals from Hong Kong to mainland China, which activists feared would undermine their territory’s legal independence and put its residents at risk. 

The protests now encompass a range of reforms — the withdrawal of the extradition bill, secured voting rights, police reform, amnesty for protesters and a public apology for how Beijing and police have portrayed the demonstrations.
Wong, already respected as an activist for LGBT causes in Hong Kong, is one of vanishingly few musicians to have put their futures on the line to push for those goals.
Wong’s group Tat Ming Pair was one of the most progressive Cantonese acts of the ’80s and ’90s (imagine a politically radical Chinese Depeche Mode). 

When Wong spoke out in favor of the Umbrella Movement at the time, he gained credibility as an activist but paid the price as an artist: His touring and recording career evaporated on the mainland.
The Chinese government often pressures popular services like Tencent (the country’s leading music-streaming service, with 800 million monthly users) to remove artists who criticize the government. Artists can find longstanding relationships with live promoters on ice and lucrative endorsement deals drying up.
“This government will do things to take revenge on you,” Wong said. 

“If you’re not obedient, you’ll be punished. Since the Umbrella Movement, I’ve been put on a blacklist in China. I anticipated that would happen, but what I did not expect was even local opportunities decreased as well. Most companies have some ties with mainland China, and they didn’t want to make their China partners unhappy, so they might as well stop working with us.”

Censorship is both overt and subtly preemptive, said Victoria Tin-bor Hui, a professor and Hong Kong native who teaches Chinese politics and history at the University of Notre Dame.
“Every time artists or stars say anything even remotely sympathetic to protesters or critical of the government, they get in trouble,” Hui said. 

“You can literally have your career ruined. Denise Ho, after she joined the Umbrella Movement, everything she had listed online or on shelves was taken off. Companies [including the cosmetics firm Lancôme] told her they would have nothing more to do with her, and she started doing everything on her own.”
So Wong and other artists like Ho have been pushing back where they can.
Wong’s recent single, “Is It a Crime,” questions Beijing crackdowns on all memorials of the Tiananmen Square massacre, especially in Hong Kong, where there was a robust culture of activism and memorials around that tragedy. 

The single, which feels akin to Pink Floyd’s expansive, ominous electronic rock, has been blacklisted on mainland streaming services and stores.
Wong plans to speak out to commemorate the anniversary of the Umbrella Movement on this tour as well.
“The government is very afraid of art and culture,” Wong said. 

“If people sing about liberty and freedom of speech, the government is afraid. When I sing about the anniversary of Tiananmen, is it a crime to remember what happened? To express views? I think the Chinese government wants to suppress this side of art and freedom.”
The fallout from his support of the protests has forced him to work with new, more underground promoters and venues. 

The change may have some silver linings, as bookers are placing his heavy synth-rock in more rebellious club settings than the Chinese casinos he’d often play stateside. (In L.A., he’s playing 1720, a downtown venue that more often hosts underground punk bands.)
“We lost the second biggest market in the world, but because of what we are fighting for, in a way, we gained some new fans. We met new promoters who are interested in promoting us in newer markets. It’s opened new options for people who don’t want to follow” the government’s hard-line approach, Wong said.
Hui agreed that while loyalty from pro-democracy protesters can’t make up for the lost income of the China market, artists should know that Hong Kongers will remember whose side they were on during this moment and turn out or push back accordingly.
“You make less money, but Hong Kong pro-democracy people say, ‘These are our own singers, we have to save them,’” Hui said. 

“They support their own artists and democracy as part of larger effort to blacklist companies that sell out Hong Kong.”
Ho testified before Congress last week to support Hong Kong’s protesters. 

“This is not a plea for so-called foreign interference. This is a plea for democracy,” Ho said in her speech. 

A new bill to ban U.S. exports of crowd-control technology to Hong Kong police has bipartisan support.
No Hong Kong artists are under any illusions that the fight to maintain democracy will be easy. 

Even the most outspoken protesters know the long odds against a Chinese government with infinite patience for stifling dissent. 

That’s why support from cultural figures and musicians can be even more meaningful now, Hui said.
“Artists, if they say anything, that cheers people on,” Hui said. 

“Psychologists say Hong Kong suffers from territory-wide depression. Even minor symbolic gestures from artists really lift people’s morale.”
Pro-democracy artists, like protesters, are more anxious than ever. 

They’ve never been more invested in these uprisings, but they also fear the worst from the mainland Chinese government. 

“If you asked me six months ago, I was not very hopeful,” Wong said. 

“But after what’s happened, even though the oppression is bigger, we are stronger and more determined than before.”

Anthony Wong Yiu-ming
Where: 1720, 1720 E. 16th St.
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Tickets: $55-$150
Info: 1720.la

The Anger of Hong Kong’s Youth

Students are once again at the heart of the city’s protests. They’re not going anywhere.

By TIMOTHY MCLAUGHLIN

Secondary-school students in Hong Kong form a human chain to protest the extradition bill.

HONG KONG—Amid the rainbow of stickers plastered on Joey Siu’s laptop, there are a few bold proclamations of her feelings on current events. 

Hong kong is not China, one sticker reads. 

Another references the ancient Code of Hammurabi, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. HK police murder civilians.
Siu is the acting external vice president of the student union at the City University of Hong Kong, and were it not for the political crisis here, her role would be, even by her own admission, mundane—perhaps coordinating on-campus blood drives or tangling with the administration over plans to change the university’s logo.
Over the summer, however, students have been central to the demonstrations that have gripped Hong Kong. 

The tumult has once again put campuses near the forefront of this city’s protest movement—a position they have filled multiple times in decades past—and provided momentum for activism in secondary schools and universities, emboldening a new crop of student leaders such as Siu who may well follow in the footsteps of their predecessors and shape higher-level politics, too.
Hong Kong’s crisis began as an outpouring of anger and frustration triggered by a bill allowing extraditions to mainland China, which operates a separate and opaque judicial system. 

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, withdrew the bill earlier this month, meeting one, and arguably the easiest, of five demands laid down by protesters, which also include implementing universal suffrage. 

She and the Chinese leadership in Beijing appeared to have been betting that by addressing the initial cause of the protests, and doing so at a time when students return to school and are in theory unable to take part in some rallies, they would be able to drain the momentum from the demonstrations, which have taken place every weekend. 

A summer holiday of civil disobedience would, they believed, fizzle to an end.
Yet this has been just the latest in a series of misreadings of public sentiment. 

“It's a fantasy,” Alvin Yeung, a pro-democracy lawmaker, told me this week on the 100th day of demonstrations. 

Government officials who believe that “are extremely out of touch,” he added. 

The protests have dramatically expanded in scope and ferocity since they began in the spring, with frequent clashes between demonstrators and police. 

More than 1,400 people have been arrested since June. 

Lam’s decision, which also included beefing up the city’s police oversight board, was met with hostility. 

The slogan “five demands, not one less” lit up the messaging apps and forums where rallies are organized. 

Demonstrations have continued unabated since Lam’s concessions with even more planned as October 1, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, draws near.
“Students are very angry,” Siu told me, as we sat in a coffee shop earlier this month. 

“Everybody in Hong Kong is very angry.” 

We met a day before a mass rally to mark the start of a two-week class boycott across universities in Hong Kong. 

She spoke with sustained intensity for nearly an hour, her phone untouched, a notable achievement as a protest at Hong Kong’s airport was growing and updates on demonstrations ping across messaging apps almost constantly. 

Dressed entirely in black, the uniform of this summer’s protests, the 20-year-old had pinned a violet-colored ribbon to her T-shirt in a show of solidarity with a female protester who was put through a humiliating strip search by police after being arrested at a demonstration. 

Protesters gather to condemn the sexual harassment of a demonstrator at a police station. 

Siu first took part in Hong Kong’s protests in 2014, when the Umbrella Movement called for comprehensive universal suffrage here. 

She watched as the government refused to budge, then set about exacting a measure of revenge—relentlessly pursuing protest leaders through the courts and disqualifying those who stood in elections. 

Her beliefs, she explained, shifted in the years that followed from more moderate positions to advocating for Hong Kong’s independence from China. 

As her political views evolved, so did her thoughts on protest methods. 

“I realized that peaceful demonstrations and protests might not be the way out,” she said.
Whereas the Umbrella Movement was characterized by a largely peaceful occupation of thoroughfares in Hong Kong, these latest rallies have been more aggressive, on the part of both police and protesters, including students. 

Siu and the City University students’ union help connect arrested students with lawyers, and the night before our meeting had been particularly busy. 

Scores of people were arrested when police stormed a subway station before charging into a train car, beating commuters and protesters at random. 

Among those grabbed by police was the president of another university’s student union.
Student unions have been a part of Hong Kong’s political activism for nearly as long as the territory has had universities. 

The University of Hong Kong was founded in 1911, and its student union was established a year later. 

There are now 22 universities and colleges here, with just over 324,000 students enrolled. 

Since their inception, these unions, and students more broadly, have often taken a leading role in activism, though their enthusiasm has ebbed and flowed with the intensity of Hong Kong’s political issues.
Following deadly riots in 1966 and 1967, many in Hong Kong believed that demonstrations could “potentially threaten the stability of the colony,” leaving an opening for students, Stephan Ortmann, a professor at City University’s Department of Asian and International Studies, wrote in a 2012 piece examining the history of student activism in Hong Kong. 

“The willingness of the students to stage demonstrations in subsequent years, therefore, positioned them as vanguards of protest,” Ortmann wrote. 

In the early 1970s, however, many were pushing for Hong Kong’s reunification with China, he noted.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, in which students played a major role, brought about another burst of activism, with student leaders from Hong Kong traveling to the mainland in a show of solidarity. 

After the June 4 massacre, though, there was “disenfranchisement and even anger” among many Hong Kong students toward Beijing, Ortmann wrote. 

“While they had been enthusiastic about China’s transformation before 1989, the students now became worried about the future of democracy both in China and in Hong Kong.” (Though the Tiananmen crackdown is marked annually with a candlelight vigil here, university student unions have boycotted the event in recent years, a decision hinged on a desire to focus on Hong Kong’s issues and a diminishing sense of Chinese identity linking younger people to the mainland.)
Students again played a role in 2003 rallies that eventually forced the then–chief executive to step down. 

More than a decade later, during the Umbrella Movement protests, representatives from the Hong Kong Federation of Students led discussions with the government in a futile attempt to end the protests. 

The memory of this meeting continues to taint current students’ trust in the authorities and is mentioned frequently by Siu and others as one reason for rejecting a similar offer presented by Lam this summer.
The federation struggled after the Umbrella Movement protests, though. 

“After what many saw as the failure of the 2014 protests, there was no clear social cause that galvanized students, who mostly returned to campus,” Ortmann told me. 

Annual marches attracted fewer and fewer people, he added, until this year.
Siu filled a vacant spot in the student union shortly before the tumult of the anti-extradition-bill movement spilled into Hong Kong’s streets. 

Her parents were unaware of her position until they saw her on TV during a press conference in June, prompting an angry text message. 

“‘Oh my God, my daughter is getting involved as a student leader,’” Siu said, pantomiming their concern. 

The scolding didn’t work.
A day after we spoke, Siu stood on a stage at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

A typhoon rolled across Hong Kong that morning, drenching the campus, and lingering gusts of wind whipped up black banners hanging from academic buildings demanding freedom for Hong Kong. 

Throngs of students made their way up slippery streets toward the rally. 

Many stopped briefly to take photos of a temporary addition to the campus, a statue of a female protester in goggles, a gas mask, and hard hat charging forward, her right hand clutching an umbrella, her left raising a black flag emblazoned with a revolutionary slogan.

A statue titled “Lady Liberty Hong Kong” is seen on campus at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Video boards were erected so people at the back of the crowd could see what was happening onstage. Some students watched a live-stream on their mobile phones, sharing headphones. 

The audio system struggled to project her words, but Siu punctuated the speech with a popular rallying cry: “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” 

Some 30,000 students chanted the phrase back in response, their voices echoing through the hills around the campus.
Students acknowledge that they are in a fortuitous position to protest. 

They are largely unencumbered by other obligations such as jobs or family responsibilities. 

Students, and youth more broadly, also have their own “political aura,” says Wong Ching Fung, who served as the president of the Chinese University’s student union from 2015 to 2016. 

“When they speak about something, citizens and society think they are more pure, more true.”
One of the only hitches in the hours-long rally was when a student from mainland China stormed the stage; the student was quickly removed. 

Relations between students from the mainland and Hong Kong have been tense this summer, with rival camps engaging in heated arguments and ripping down each other’s posters. 

One particularly telling scene came at City University, where a mainland student was caught toppling a pro-democracy statue before being subdued by campus security.
As the event drew to a close, Jacky So, the current president of the Chinese University student union, answered questions from a mob of reporters. 

So ditched plans for an internship and part-time summer job when protests began to gather momentum. 

The class boycott is not an education boycott, he explained. 

There are public lectures and other instructional events on campus for students to attend—“We won’t stop learning,” he told me. 

Secondary school students have held their own demonstrations, making human chains around their schools in acts of disobedience that have at times been tinged with teenage awkwardness.
Nearby, Keith Fong, the president of Hong Kong Baptist University’s student union, sat with other union members hurriedly eating from styrofoam takeout containers. 

Fong, a first-year student in European studies, was arrested this summer for purchasing a laser pointer. 

The green and purple lights have become a favored tool of protesters, who shine them at police officers to great annoyance.
When he was elected president in March, Fong was demoralized by a lack of enthusiasm from his peers, something he attributes to a lull in activism after 2014. 

“I was so upset. I thought my schoolmates lacked values and didn’t pay attention,” he told me. 

Now students have rediscovered a “spirit of sacrifice,” he said. 

He joked that had he known how busy he would have been when he was elected this spring, he would have turned down the position heading the union. (Fong was arrested again a few hours after we spoke, after police found him in possession of a wallet he found at the rally and was returning to its owner. He was eventually released, and his story is not unusual: Davin Kenneth Wong, who was the acting president of the Hong Kong University students’ union for this year, has said that he had fled the city, fearing for his safety and that of his family, after he was beaten last month by a man with rattan sticks. In his resignation letter from the union, Wong noted that his predecessor was recently arrested, underlining the increased threat faced by student political leaders here. They have been “detained, followed, beaten and threatened,” Sunny Cheung, a member of the Hong Kong University students’ union, told a congressional commission this week.)
At the rally, I met another student from Hong Kong Baptist University, who asked that he be identified only by his last name, So. 

So came to the event with his friends, who perched themselves on a building staircase to get a better view, and spoke with pessimism and macabre humor about the protests. 

“Even a pig will squeal and yell before it is killed,” he said.
When I asked him if he thought that demonstrations would quiet down with school in session, he laughed. 

“Of course not,” he replied. 

Pointing out toward the crowd, he told me the government “said this would all end a few months ago.”