Joshua Wong and Alex Chow: The People of Hong Kong
Will Not Be Cowed by China
You can arrest us. But more protesters will keep coming
out.
By Joshua Wong and Alex Chow
Mr.
Wong and Mr. Chow are Hong Kong activists.
· Aug. 31, 2019
HONG KONG — “If we burn, you burn
with us.” A famous line in the movie “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” has been given a new
life in Hong Kong’s summerlong protests: It has come to represent the spirit unleashed
by hundreds of thousands of protesters. As many commentators have pointed out, the massive, leaderless resistance
movement here is a critical front-line battle against the authoritarian Chinese
Communist Party in Beijing. A dictatorial party facing domestic and global
pressures — especially from the ongoing trade negotiations with the United
States — the C.C.P. is getting impatient, apparently. On Friday, it targeted leading
activists and politicians in Hong Kong with a round of arrests, possibly
signaling that a broader crackdown may be around the corner.
That morning, while one of us,
Joshua, was walking to the metro station, officers from the Hong Kong police
snatched him and shoved him into a car. He was arrested on three charges related to a protest outside police headquarters on June 21.
As Friday wore on, more activists, including two moderate pro-democracy
lawmakers and an advocate of independence for Hong Kong, were arrested as well.
The charges they face range from rioting and assaulting police officers, to
inciting and participating in an unauthorized assembly, to damaging property
and illegally entering the Legislature.
Even as the Chinese authorities try to
intimidate protesters, they are using their vast propaganda machine to try to
convince the public in China that foreign agents and local conspirators are
inciting unrest in Hong Kong, hoping to create chaos.
Friday’s
arrests mark another watershed moment in the fast-moving story of Hong Kong’s
eroding freedoms. But so, too, does the protest on Saturday: Tens of thousands of people
marched again for their rights, despite a police ban on any gatherings that
day, braving arrests, tear gas and water cannons. The people of Hong Kong will
not be cowed by the C.C.P.
On the very same day five years ago, the C.C.P. smashed
Hong Kongers’ dream for electoral freedom by announcing that it would add more
controls to the way the city’s leader, the chief executive, is nominated and
elected. The Umbrella Movement was born out of that decision. This
summer’s protest movement was born of the Hong Kong government’s
push to hurriedly pass a bill that would have allowed the extradition of
criminal suspects to China, at China’s request — a bill that would have sealed,
right now, the death of the “one country, two systems” principle that is
supposed to safeguard the city’s semi-autonomy until 2047.
Recent reporting reveals
that a few weeks ago Chinese officials — very likely including
President Xi Jinping himself — rejected a proposal by Hong Kong’s leader,
Carrie Lam, to pacify the protesters. At the C.C.P.’s instruction, Reuters
reports, Ms. Lam toughened her stance toward the demonstrators, squarely declining
all five of their demands — including reforming the electoral system or
appointing an independent commission to investigate police violence this
summer. Just this week, she went even further, suggesting that the government
could pass the Emergency Regulations Ordinance,
a version of martial law.
The ongoing mass movement in Hong Kong
is civil unrest all right — but civil unrest that is the doing of the C.C.P.
The protesters are only defending their beloved city, a beacon of liberty,
equality and human dignity. In the past months, young students, middle-aged
professionals and the elderly have come together and dared to resist the rising
Chinese empire. Risking their future, our fellow citizens have braved
batons, tear gas, rubber bullets and even slashing by triad members. They did so again Saturday.
The
Hong Kong police has repeatedly abused its powers, by way of excessive violence
on the streets but also, it is reported, by maiming first-aid volunteers, sexually harassing female
protesters under arrest or assaulting other people in their custody. The
authorities are also intimidating big businesses.
Hong Kong’s youth are maturing
quickly from breathing in the toxic air that is being shot at them. Many
teenagers buy safety masks with their pocket money — and their convictions
strengthened. While the elderly implore police officers to put down their
pistols and batons, professionals are making donations to the
movement.
Righting the wrong that is being done
in Hong Kong is also the business of the outside world and rests on its will to
confront a C.C.P.-controlled China. World leaders cannot keep mistaking their
wish for the peaceful rise of China (and one that perhaps will eventually
become democratic) with the reality of the Chinese Communist dictatorship
today. Any act or policy that sustains the lifeblood of the Communist
dictatorship in Beijing is an offense to the peoples whom that dictatorship
persecutes and oppresses — in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and mainland China.
When Britain handed control of Hong
Kong to China in 1997, some people thought that what was then a colony — a
wartime trophy of European imperial empires — was about to come unshackled. But
handing Hong Kong to a reviving empire only spelled its
re-colonialization. If China had been a democracy in 1997, the handover
would have meant no dispute. In reality, it turned the millions of Hong Kong’s
residents into refugees in their own city, subservient to the authoritarian
Communist regime in Beijing.
Many Hong Kongers are people, or
descendants of people, who fled the mainland to escape a regime that starved
tens of millions of its citizens decades ago, then murdered students in 1989
and has since persecuted political dissents incessantly. Today, that regime
fuels Chinese nationalism on the mainland by delivering fragmented information
and fabricated propaganda, or “fake news,” to its people.
We understand that some
critics of American interventionism may be inclined to have sympathy for
China as a still-developing country bullied by an over-dominant West. But
please listen to us here in Hong Kong: Communist China is no alternative
to the interventionism you hate or contest — that is an inconvenient truth
that the world must reckon with.
The massive resistance movement in Hong
Kong is a crisis of legitimacy for the Chinese government. The uprising is also
a call for the rest of the world to support our crusade for human dignity,
equality and freedom. The protesters at the front lines of these marches, who
go out there in the city’s streets, are doing no less than taking on that
enormously powerful communist-cum-fascist regime.
In
September, the struggle will only take on more life. We know that the Chinese
government wants grand celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the birth of
the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1; it wants to put history on its
side by rewriting the memory of the people. But Hong Kongers won’t let it
commemorate that day without a fight.
In the meantime, American legislators
are supposed to vote on a bill, the Human Rights and Democracy
Act, that would give the president of the United States
power to penalize Chinese officials who interfere in Hong Kong’s affairs. The
law could also allow the United States to revoke the special economic treatment
that Hong Kong enjoys, as separate from the mainland.
If the United States Congress passes
the bill, it will be delivering a firm message both to other silent allies of
Hong Kong and to China’s dictators. The clock is ticking in Hong Kong. Our
future is being determined now.
Joshua Wong (@joshuawongcf) is
the secretary general of Demosisto. Alex Chow (alexchow18) is
a Hong Kong activist.
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