Portrait of Heroes: Hong Kong protesters
The people of Hong Kong had exhibited incredible bravery in standing up to an evil empire in an attempt to maintain the freedoms they have enjoyed for so long.
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| A photograph of a slice of the Hong Kong protest, containing 2 million people. Every single person in this photo not wearing a badge is a hero. Justin Trudeau called this a "small fringe minority". Probably. // photo by Manson Yim |
In 1997, when the keys to Hong Kong were handed back to China, I wasn't really aware of its importance. I remember my mom mentioning it to me, but there wasn't a whole lot of elaboration that I can remember and I lacked the requisite intellectual curiosity to delve into it.
I've only been to Hong Kong twice, but both times I was entranced by the city. The architecture. The lights. The bustle. The food. The mass transit was one of the best I had ever seen in my travels. The people were free and happy. There was free commerce. The people were fantastic.
A little older and wiser, I look back and wonder. Did Margaret Thatcher really think that China was going to keep their word that they would keep Hong Kong autonomous for fifty years with the "one country, two systems" idea?
Just a scant few years later, protests arose concerning civil rights and universal suffrage. By 2014, protests over the mission creep of the Chinese Communist Party into Hong Kong's affairs grew to a worldwide phenomenon. Beijing announced in August of 2014 that the people of Hong Kong would be able to vote, as long as it was one of the three appointed candidates that the CCP approved, a mockery of the idea of an actual democratic election. As Henry Ford said, "You can have any color you want, as long as it's black." At least Ford was upfront about it.
Five years later, tensions boiled over again, as China introduced an extradition bill that would allow the CCP to essentially extradite anyone into Beijing for interrogation, a show trial, and prison. Given Beijing's track record of disappearing people, like they did with staff members of Causeway Bay Books in 2015 for daring to sell books the CCP didn't like, one could hardly blame the Hong Kong people for being suspicious of their actions.
In response, the people of Hong Kong protested with five demands:
- Withdrawal of the extradition bill
- Retract the classification of the protests as riots
- Release and exonerate political prisoners of fellow protesters
- Establish an independent commission to investigate police conduct and use of force during the protests
- Resignation of chief executive Carrie Lam and universal suffrage of elections
Though Carrie Lam, the chief executive, eventually withdrew the bill, the writing was on the wall that the Communist Party would continue eroding their freedoms until none were left. The rallying cry became "Five demands, not one less."
Thus set up the drawn-out, difficult battle for freedom in a David and Goliath match.
Demonstrations were peaceful to start. The people learned many lessons from the 2014 Yellow Umbrella movement. There were decentralized communications, much of it through Telegram, to reveal as little as possible to spying agencies. They adopted the slogan "Be water", a Bruce Lee saying, to be as flexible as possible to emerging responses by authorities. As law enforcement descended on one group, they would disperse only to reconvene elsewhere.
The peace ended quickly as the police began to engage in more and more forceful conduct. Tear gas, non-lethal rounds, and water cannons with blue dye that create a burning sensation on exposed skin were deployed without much discretion. Certain protesters were "disappeared". There were allegations that the police murdered protesters, like Alex Chow who fell from a parking garage as police were clearing it, and Chan Yin-Lam whose naked body was found in the bay. Neither had conclusive proof of wrongdoing nor was it definitively ruled out. Many of the protesters, including those that have been injured or died, are extremely young. Teenagers. Minors. The future of Hong Kong, loathe to grow up in a totalitarian state.
To make matters worse, the Hong Kong police use Chinese-made tear gas canisters with poor build quality (but I repeat myself) that burn at dangerous temperatures, release poisonous and carcinogenic gases, and are prone to detonation. The police frequently ignored stated protocol without repercussion, utilizing more and more extreme and violent tactics against peaceful protesters.
Among numerous allegations that Hong Kong police directly and intentionally targeted journalists covering the protests, a journalist was permanently blinded in one eye as a police-fired rubber bullet struck her in the eye. Government investigations have found the officer responsible for firing the bullet but refused to release his name, making it impossible for her to receive compensation.
Just several weeks into the protests, a mob of people in white shirts attacked people in the Yuen Long metro station. Many, if not, all, of these were members of the Triads, a crime organization in Hong Kong. Police were seen largely ignoring these attacks for hours as innocent people were beaten mercilessly. In the following days, protesters showed up at the metro station to peacefully protest the attacks. This time, the police showed up quickly and ended up beating the protesters. Many suspected that the police paid the Triads to commit these attacks against the people as terrorist acts to make people afraid to protest. And why wouldn't people suspect this? A study showed that some of the people attacking the protesters in the 2014 Yellow Umbrella Movement were members of the Triads, paid by the increasingly CCP-controlled Hong Kong government as thugs-for-hire.
There were also several protesters shot and beaten by the police. In one case, it was defensive, where a police officer shot a rioter that took a swing at his arm and a fellow officer lay on the ground getting beaten. In another shooting, the police officer clearly escalated the situation for no clear reason and went to deadly force when an altercation wasn't even necessary. The police were also caught in multiple beatings including one in a subway station, seemingly at unarmed people begging for mercy, one just piling on a lone protester on the ground even kicking him as he lay lifeless, and a man violently pushed to the ground for talking with his hands raised.
Organizations have compiled massive databases documenting the police violence, earning the Hong Kong Police Force condemnation from Amnesty International. Documentaries such as Revolution of Our Times show in vivid resolution the tensions between the police and protesters.
On the protesters' side, there were no looting and burning of businesses that had nothing to do with the grievances as seen in the BLM riots, stateside. The violence was pretty much restricted to the cause, like burning the Chinese flag or vandalizing CCP surveillance apparatus (if you can call that violence), or responding to violence, like beating the taxi driver who had driven his car into a crowd, or tactical to prevent police intrusion. Most other violence had been after the police had utilized aggressive and violent tactics against peaceful protestors, and defensive or retaliatory like Molotov cocktails and bricks hurled at police as they shot the tear gas, blue dye water cannons, and rubber bullets. The vast majority of this "violence" had been caused by those in the "front lines" of the protest, essentially the shield for the rest of the protest.
While no embattled group this size facing this kind of opposition is ever perfect, this was about as perfect as it would ever get, rivaled perhaps only by MLK's civil rights movement decades ago. Protesters gained worldwide recognition for deeds such as putting out fires ignited by the ultra-hot tear gas canisters, administering first aid as HK police blocked aid workers, cleaning up the streets at night, and even saving a pigeon from tear gas.
The clashes reached a crescendo at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as students barricaded a road into the school to prevent the police from attacking. The police fired water cannons with blue dye as well as rubber bullets, while the protesters responded by throwing bricks and petrol bombs. The confrontations lasted for days as students that tried to escape were attacked by the police.
In an election held in 2019, the pro-democracy candidates won in a landslide, a major black eye for Carrie Lam and her Beijing puppeteers. A record turnout of over 72% resulted in the pro-democracy candidates sweeping 90% of the seats, nearly quadrupling the amount of seats they held four years prior. This was a major referendum against the actions of the CCP, which was, unfortunately, largely symbolic as an autocracy such as the CCP did not recognize the authority of local governments and particularly their election results. Hundreds of pro-democracy legislators had resigned or been forcibly removed from office. Some have even been arrested. In the subsequent 2021 election, only vetted candidates may run for office and voter participation plunged to 30%, as they saw the elections as merely a song and a dance.
As COVID struck, the protest movement began to die down and Beijing passed the National Security Law for Hong Kong. This was an intentionally vague and oppressive law that could be applied broadly to anyone that angers the Chinese Communist Party for essentially any reason. All protest slogans and materials were effectively banned, with a maximum prison sentence of life. Even a rather brilliant protest of people holding up blank papers, illustrating the oppressiveness of Beijing's censorship, were cracked down upon. People could also be disappeared into China for kangaroo court trials.
Carrie Lam promised that the law would not be applied retroactively. Anyone that believed that probably also believed that China would restrain itself from interfering in Hong Kong for fifty years after the handover.
I would never criticize anyone for fleeing from this situation. But some decided to stay, knowing they would likely be arrested or worse, even extradited and tortured. Give those folks high emissions reusable shopping bags as jockstraps!
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| Agnes Chow (left) and Joshua Wong (right) along with other protesters, trying to understand mainlanders more by looking at issues how they would. // photo by Voice of America |
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| Jimmy Lai (center), media mogul Batman, walks toward the Court of Appeals. Let him free. Please. Isn't making him wear a purple coat punishment enough? // photo by Studio Incendo |
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| Grandma Wong, equivalent to the physical strength of two cops plus five other cops using telekinesis to assist their two struggling buddies. // screenshot from Stand News video |
These protests were not just a brave stand for freedom for their own people. These protests served as an inspiration to people across the globe to stand up to their governments. It inspired the Yellow Vest protests in France (though honestly, did France really need the inspiration to protest?) as well as the protests in Chile against political corruption and the Catalonia region of Spain for jailing leaders of a political movement. People in Thailand and Indonesia also stood up to their governments in protest.
Additionally, the protests have inspired a proliferation in the genre of protest art. Hong Kong artists put brush to paper and created a great amount of art from watercolor to digital art to logos to street art to inspire and carry on the protest movement. The artists are in themselves heroic, as many of these pieces now run afoul of the National Security Law and they could be prosecuted for creating art, resulting in a chilling effect in the Hong Kong art scene.
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| // A borrowed place on borrowed time Bouie Choi 2020 Acrylic on wood |
A medium and style derived from ancient Chinese scroll paintings, depicting a modern city in crisis. Buildings are toppling as if attacked by a foreign appendage, areas are smoldering, and chaotic ambiguous scenes evoke despair. The medium and styling give away the forces behind the carnage.
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| // untitled Fung Kin Fan 2019 Watercolor |
This scene, adapted from a photograph by Reuters photographer James Pomfret, breaks my heart every time I view it. Are they departing? Are they saying goodbye? Or perhaps they're headed out to a protest together? What do they think the chances are that they may not see each other again? What is going through their minds? What are the chances they get arrested for doing what they think is right? What are the chances they get hit with a smoke grenade or rubber bullet tomorrow? What do they think of their prospects of having a life together or possibly raising a family in their home country? It's a moment of love, hope, and despair. It's a bit odd looking back now, after 2020, masks have become so synonymous with COVID, we forget that they were a great tool to conceal identities among freedom fighters. My wife and I wore a mask at a protest in support of Hong Kong in 2019 in San Francisco, where it was rumored among the protesters that the CCP had people on site spying on and recording us. While the situation in San Francisco is quite a bit different, my father was, at the time, working in Shanghai.
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| // Paper Over the Cracks Giraffe Leung 2019-2020 Street art |
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| // Hong Kong protest logos designers unknown |
Artists and designers have also produced creative and interesting logos for use in symbolizing the movement. The one on the left utilizes the flower on Hong Kong's post-reunification flag and adapts it for the movement. The official Hong Kong flag features a Bauhinia flower on a red backdrop. The white flower represents Hong Kong and the red color, while a popular color among Chinese, also represents the Chinese Communist flag. There are five stars in the flower, also pulled from the flag of China, representing the reunification of the two, though I personally see it more as China infecting Hong Kong, as a deadly virus. This logo transforms the flower into yellow umbrellas, the symbol of the 2014 Hong Kong protests, with the stars being repelled by those umbrellas. The one on the right are two Chinese characters, when read right side up, reads "Hong Kong", but when turned 90 degrees counterclockwise, reads "add oil", meaningfully translated to "Go Hong Kong!"
While the Hong Kong protests were not exactly derived from Rothbardian philosophy or anything explicitly libertarian, they were still protests for the reduction of state intervention and for less dependent governance. Some protesters demand democracy, which in and of itself does not necessarily lend to freedom. Others directly clamor for freedom. Whatever the underlying motivations or goals, they are, all of them, sacrificing to push for a freer world, and to that, we owe them a debt of gratitude.
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