A decade of protest is now a defiant reminiscence

The recollections started dashing again as Kenneth strolled by Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, as soon as a focus for town’s resistance to China.

As a toddler, Kenneth would purchase calligraphy posters from pro-democracy politicians on the annual Lunar New Yr truthful.

Then there have been the protest marches he joined as a youngster, that may at all times begin right here earlier than winding their method by town. When he was simply 12, he started attending the park’s large vigils for the Tiananmen bloodbath – a taboo in mainland China, however commemorated brazenly in Hong Kong.

These vigils have ended now. The politicians’ stalls on the truthful are gone, protests have been silenced and pro-democracy campaigners jailed. Kenneth feels his political coming-of-age – and Hong Kong’s – is being erased.

“Folks nonetheless keep it up with life… however you possibly can really feel the change little by little,” mentioned the previous activis, who didn’t wish to reveal his actual identify when he spoke to us.

“Our metropolis’s character is disappearing.”

On the floor Hong Kong seems to be the identical, its packed trams nonetheless rumbling down bustling streets, its vibrant neon-lit chaos undimmed.

However look nearer and there are indicators town has modified – from the skyscrapers lighting up each night time with exultations of China, the motherland, to the chatter of mainland Mandarin more and more heard alongside Hong Kong’s native Cantonese.

It’s inconceivable to know what number of of Hong Kong’s greater than seven million individuals welcome Beijing’s grip. However lots of of 1000’s have taken half in protests previously decade since a pro-democracy motion erupted in 2014.

Not everybody supported it, however few would argue Beijing crushed it. As a turbulent decade attracts to an in depth, hopes for a freer Hong Kong have withered.

China says it has steadied a unstable metropolis. Tons of have been jailed underneath a sweeping nationwide safety regulation (NSL), which additionally drove 1000’s of disillusioned and cautious Hongkongers overseas, together with activists who feared or fled arrest. Others, like Kenneth, have stayed and hold a low profile.

However in a lot of them lives the reminiscence of a freer Hong Kong – a spot they’re preventing to recollect in defiance of Beijing’s remaking of their metropolis.

When Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997, it was underneath the reassurance that town would hold some rights, together with free speech, freedom of meeting and rule of regulation for 50 years. However as Beijing’s energy grew, so did the disquiet inside the metropolis’s pro-democracy camp.

In September 2014, tens of 1000’s of protesters started to stage mass sit-ins in downtown Hong Kong, demanding absolutely democratic elections. It propelled a brand new era of pro-democracy campaigners to prominence – similar to Joshua Wong, then a 17-year-old scholar, and Benny Tai, a school professor, who known as the motion Occupy Central.

It additionally seeded the bottom for extra explosive protests in 2019, which had been triggered by Beijing’s proposal to extradite locals to the mainland. The plan was scrapped however the protests intensified over a number of months as calls grew for extra democracy, changing into essentially the most severe problem to Beijing’s authority in Hong Kong.

“With out Benny Tai, there would have been no Occupy Central,” says Chan Kin-man, who co-founded the marketing campaign with Tai and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming.

“He had the mood of students and spoke his thoughts… that’s why he was daring sufficient to push for modifications and take into consideration large concepts. It’s at all times individuals [like this] who change historical past.”

Chan and Rev Chu are each exiles in Taiwan now. Chan moved to Taipei in 2021, after serving 11 months in jail for inciting public nuisance in his function in Occupy Central. He’s now a fellow at a neighborhood analysis institute.

Tai remains to be in Hong Kong, the place he’ll spend the subsequent decade behind bars.

Earlier this month he was sentenced to jail for subversion, together with greater than 40 different pro-democracy campaigners together with Wong, a lot of whom have been in jail since their arrest in early 2021. As Wong left the courtroom, he shouted: “I really like Hong Kong.”

The next day 76-year-old billionaire Jimmy Lai, a fierce critic of China, testified at his trial for allegedly colluding with overseas forces. Frail however defiant, he instructed the courtroom his now-defunct newspaper Apple Each day had solely espoused the values of Hong Kong’s individuals: “Pursuit of democracy and freedom of speech”.

The trials have handed quietly, in stark distinction to the occasions that led to them. Small indicators of protest outdoors the courtroom had been shortly shut down – a lady sobbing about her son’s sentence was taken away by police.

Beijing defends the restrictions – together with the NSL underneath which the trials are occurring – as important for stability. It says the West or its allies haven’t any proper to query its legal guidelines or the way it applies them.

However critics accuse China of reneging on the deal it struck in 1997. They are saying it has weakened town’s courts and muzzled the as soon as resounding cry for democracy in Hong Kong.

Chan has watched these occasions unfold from afar with a heavy coronary heart.

After 2014, there had nonetheless been the opportunity of change, he mentioned. Now, “a whole lot of issues have turn out to be inconceivable… Hong Kong has turn out to be no totally different from different Chinese language cities”.

Confronted with this actuality after campaigning for democracy for greater than a decade, “you possibly can say that I’ve failed in all the pieces I’ve completed in my life”, he mentioned with a wry smile.

However nonetheless he perseveres. Moreover educating courses on Chinese language society, he’s writing a e book about Occupy Central, amassing objects for an archive of Hong Kong’s protest scene, organising conferences, and giving digital lectures on democracy and politics.

These efforts “make me really feel that I haven’t given up on Hong Kong. I don’t really feel like I’ve deserted it”.

But, there are moments when he grapples together with his determination to depart. He’s happier in Taiwan, however he additionally feels “a way of loss”.

“Am I nonetheless along with different Hongkongers, going through the identical challenges as them?”

“In case you are not respiration the air right here, you don’t actually know what’s occurring… for those who don’t really feel the heartbeat right here, it means you’re really gone,” mentioned Kenneth, as he continued his stroll by Victoria Park.

With pals leaving town in droves in the previous couple of years, he has misplaced depend of the variety of farewell events he’s attended. Nonetheless, he insists on staying: “That is the place my roots are.”

What irritates him is the rhetoric from those that go away, that the Hong Kong they knew has died. “Hong Kong continues to exist. Its individuals are nonetheless right here! So how can they are saying that Hong Kong is lifeless?”

However, he acknowledged, there have been dramatic modifications. Hongkongers now should assume twice about what they are saying out loud, Kenneth mentioned.

Many are actually adapting to a “normalised state of surveillance”. There are crimson traces, “however it is rather tough to establish them”.

As an alternative of campaigning brazenly, activists now write petition letters. Rallies, marches and protests are undoubtedly off-limits, he added. However many, like Kenneth, are cautious of participating in any activism, as a result of they concern they’ll be arrested.

A t-shirt, social media posts and image books have fallen foul of the regulation not too long ago, touchdown their homeowners in jail for sedition.

Today Kenneth goes out much less often. “The distinction is so drastic now. I don’t wish to bear in mind what occurred previously.”

Nonetheless, as he walked out of the park and headed to the Admiralty district, extra recollections unspooled.

As he neared the federal government headquarters, he pointed to the spot the place he choked on tear gasoline for the primary time, on 28 September 2014.

That day, the police fired 87 rounds of tear gasoline on unarmed protesters, an act that enraged demonstrators and galvanised the pro-democracy motion.

Because the protests deepened and tear gasoline turned a typical sight, many sheltered behind umbrellas, spawning a brand new moniker – the Umbrella Motion.

The ultimate cease was his alma mater, Hong Kong Polytechnic College, often known as PolyU. It was a key battleground through the 2019 demonstrations that noticed protesters battling police on the streets, hurling projectiles in opposition to tear gasoline, water cannons and rubber bullets.

5 years on, the PolyU entrance the place college students fended off the police with bricks and petrol bombs in a fiery showdown has been reconstructed. A fountain which noticed essentially the most intense clashes has been demolished.

Like elsewhere in Hong Kong, the campus appeared to have been scrubbed of its disobedient previous. Kenneth believed it was as a result of the college “doesn’t need individuals to recollect sure issues”.

Then, he darted away to a quiet nook. Hidden beneath the bushes was a low wall pockmarked with holes and gobs of concrete. It was inconceivable to inform what they had been. However Kenneth believes these had been traces of the battles which escaped the purge of recollections.

“I don’t imagine we’ll overlook what occurred,” he mentioned. “Forgetting the previous is a type of betrayal.”

At a Tesco’s café in Watford within the UK, Kasumi Legislation remembered what she missed about her outdated dwelling.

“I by no means thought I’d love the ocean in Hong Kong a lot. I solely realised this after I arrived within the UK,” she mentioned, as she tucked right into a full English breakfast. Not like the chilly and darkish ocean surrounding Britain, “in Hong Kong the ocean is so shiny, as a result of there are such a lot of buildings… I didn’t realise how stunning our metropolis is”.

Kasumi’s determination to maneuver to the UK along with her husband and younger daughter had stemmed from an unease that crept up on her over the earlier decade. The Occupy Central protests started simply months after her daughter was born in 2014.

Within the following years, as Beijing’s grip appeared to tighten – scholar activists had been jailed and booksellers disappeared – Kasumi’s discomfort grew.

“Staying in Hong Kong was, I wouldn’t say, unsafe,” she mentioned. “However on daily basis, little by little, there was a sense of one thing not being proper.”

Then Hong Kong erupted in protest once more in 2019. As Beijing cracked down, the UK provided a visa scheme for Hongkongers born earlier than the 1997 handover, and Kasumi and her husband agreed it was time to go for the sake of their daughter.

They settled within the city of Watford close to London, the place her husband discovered a job in IT whereas Kasumi turned a stay-at-home mum.

However she had by no means lived overseas earlier than, and she or he struggled with a deep homesickness which she documented in emotional video diaries on YouTube. One in every of them even went viral final 12 months, putting a chord with some Hongkongers whereas others criticised her for selecting to to migrate.

Finally it was an excessive amount of to bear, and she or he returned to Hong Kong for a go to final 12 months. Over two months she visited childhood haunts like a theme park and a science museum, scoffed down her mum’s homecooked fuzzy melon with vermicelli and stir fried clams, and handled herself to acquainted delights similar to egg tarts and melon-flavoured soy milk.

However the Hong Kong she remembered had additionally modified. Her mum regarded older. Her favorite retailers within the Girls Market had closed down.

Sitting by the harbour at Tsim Sha Tsui one night time, she was joyful to be reunited with the twinkling sea she had missed a lot. Then she realised most people round her had been talking in Mandarin.

Tears streamed down her face. “Once I regarded out on the sea it regarded acquainted, however after I regarded round on the individuals round me, it felt unusual.”

Kasumi wonders when she would go to once more. With the passing of a brand new safety regulation this 12 months – Article 23 – her pals have suggested her to delete social media posts from previous protests earlier than returning.

It’s a far cry from the fearlessness she remembers from 2019, when she introduced her daughter to the protests they usually marched on the streets with 1000’s of individuals, united of their defiance.

“It’s too late to show again,” she mentioned. “I really feel if I am going again to Hong Kong I may not be used to life there, to be sincere.

“My daughter is joyful right here. Once I see her, I feel it’s value it. I would like her world to be larger.”

Kasumi’s world is greater too – she has discovered a job and made new pals. However at the same time as she builds a brand new life within the UK, she stays decided to protect the Hongkonger in her – and her little one.

Kasumi and her husband solely converse in Cantonese to their daughter, and the household usually watches Cantonese movies collectively. Her daughter doesn’t but perceive the importance of the 2019 protests she marched in, nor the motion that started in 2014, when she was born. However Kasumi plans to elucidate when she is older.

The seeds Kasumi is planting are already taking root. She is especially happy with the best way her daughter responds to individuals who name her Chinese language. “She will get offended, and she’s going to argue with them,” Kasumi mentioned, with a smile.

“She at all times tells individuals, ‘I’m not Chinese language, I’m a Hongkonger’.”