We describe the current situation in Hong Kong as wartime.
We do think that it is a war here now.
What began as a series of peaceful protests against a proposed law to allow
Chief Executive Cary Lam's government to extradite Hong Kongers to mainland China
has become a de facto war about the future of democracy.
Lam withdrew the bill, but the government of the semi-autonomous
territory has shown little other compromise. The resulting clashes
between protesters and police are fundamentally transforming a
historically and economically unique mega city into the key battleground, making
the conflict about greater than just Hong Kong.
It's the people versus Carrie Lam, Hong Kong versus mainland China, democracy and
freedom versus authoritarianism and governmental surveillance.
But after nearly six months of resistance, who are the Hongkongers keeping
the seemingly impossible fight alive?
How much money do you think you've spent?
Oh God.
Don't ask me this. It's just killing me even to think about it. Oh, I think I
spent like 30,000 US dollars myself to this, to this movement.
This is Chong. He works in tech is in his early 20s and says he has been on the
frontlines since the protests began in June 2019.
Masked to avoid police surveillance, he's a driving force among fellow protesters,
but despite his extensive efforts to keep the movement going, he insists that
he's just a regular concerned citizen.
There's no real leader commanding us or
giving us instructions on what to do. We do whatever we believe was right and so
it's like millions of people thinking individually no matter who you arrest.
Like Josh Wong, he's been arrested multiple times. It feels like he's just here
for being arrested, and then alongside with a lot of Pan Democratic Party
members, activists, they're arrested. Still, you don't see anything. You don't see the
movement dying out. We are still going on.
Joshua Wong was one of
the student leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution.
Back then, protestors looked up to a few key people to lead the fight against China's
proposed involvement in choosing Hong Kong's leader. Yet while Wong and other
prominent activists remain important voices, the movement has strategically
downplayed them to make it more difficult to hold individuals accountable
for the group at large.
it's precisely this focus on the group of the individual that seems to have
transformed Hong Kong fundamentally.
We've become like more like a team, a cooperative, when we are on the streets.
We were not originally like that. Hong Kong is very pressurized.
We are very stressed. So usually when you feel stress, you're not nice to people, right?
You know, this all about the movement.
This is Cheryl. She's an educator as well as a peaceful protester.
When I say peaceful, it means she's not one of the mostly young Hong Kong protesters
at the front lines wearing heavy protective gear such as
gas masks and helmets in order to keep the increasingly violent police at bay.
Instead, she helps in ways she knows best.
Because I have been using Telegram for so many years, I soon joined a lot of groups.
At first when things were not yet well established, people came out and shouting
in those groups to ask for help in different aspects.
Iit was like volunteering, okay. I joined some groups for translation.
We say that we are more in the publicity, in propaganda teams.
Using the encrypted messaging app Telegram to coordinate,
Hong Kongers have crowdfunded millions of US dollars to publish full-page ads
in major newspapers around the world.
Cheryl will help translate the ads into multiple languages listing the movements five demands:
the full withdrawal of the extradition bill;
the unconditional release of all arrested protesters without prosecution;
an end to characterizing protesters as rioters;
an independent inquiry into police violence;
and last but not least, universal suffrage to elect a truly democratic government.
I think the people get more emotional today than in the previous weeks. You can feel it, you know.
The atmosphere is more stressed.
At Wan Chai, in front of the headquarters, they have already fired tear gas.
And then the police at the government headquarters, they have worn their masks already.So that means tear gas is on the way.
They just said the next street is also packed with protesters.
So I noticed that there are a lot of like young kids out here. What do you
think about that?
I think the parents of very brave and I'm very happy because it is a very positive and constructive
first-hand civil education for the children.
So they experience it, and they would be able to judge what is right and wrong.
And also, they can see with their naked eyes that we are not rioters, we are a peaceful as we can.
The atmosphere may change, but the protests are now so routine that they follow a pattern.
They ask us to disperse a little bit so we leave more space to run in the case we need to.
They're asking for first aid. So they are looking for first aid.
So you'll see some first aiders, they are running towards the front.
Do you understand the synergy between the non-frontline and the-frontline?
Well, have you ever thought why, while they have big conflicts in the front and the "peaceful protesters"
are not leaving?
Because, you know, we have been told to stay with them to kind of to protect them.
But we have to leave them space so they can escape from the police when they need to.
So we have to listen to their commands and stay here.
We are grouped together as a team, as a group, because we are like against the
outside pressure together.
It's this understanding that only as a collective
do Hong Kong protesters stand a chance
that has opened up new forms of
solidarity within the community.
Many protesters like Chong, who says he
belongs to the city's top 20 percent of earners, sacrifice not just time and
energy but also money to make sure everyone is able to participate in the movement
One of the gas masks and the filters caused around 40 US dollars and
the goggle costs another 20 US dollars. So let's say a helmet costs five dollars,
and then the black shirt, black stuff we wear, cost another few bucks, so I mean I
would consider each time we go out to equip a person properly to defend themselves
against teargas it costs around 100 bucks for everyone. So it's a lot of money.
At the same time, it's not a lot of money to a certain group of people who are not able to be in
the frontline or maybe just not even able to
show their name because of Chinese company backlash
or their involvement in terms of doing business with China.
One of the student protesters Chung has been supporting is Gayao, who was arrested after
police found some of his belongings including his wallet and ID on the street where a
large rally took place the day before.
He didn't feel comfortable going too much
into detail about what happened as his case is still ongoing, but just know that
it often so happens that protesters, especially those at the front lines,
ditched their gear on the spot when crackdowns begin as police in Hong Kong
will arrest anyone even remotely suspected of participating in what the
government deems illegal assemblies.
If you have a black t-shirt and a face mask in your backpack,
there's a very real chance police will arrest you for this.
Sham Shui Po district is the lowest income. The district of the lowest income in Hong Kong.
This is where Gayao lives with his mom, a secretary, and his dad, who works construction.
When I asked him about his family's economic standing,
he sheepishly says his family is unable to benefit from Hong Kong's economic power.
He isn't alone and the reason he took me here is to show me local businesses
supporting the movement and especially protestors lacking financial resources.
This is one of the shops supporting the protesters, Tomato C Hing.
They give out free food and drinks for the protesters during the protest period.
And it is famous for printing the five demands of the Hong Kong people in a receipt.
Gayao shows me another local business which was raided by police only a couple of days prior.
It's a tiny shop that sells mostly protective gear such as
respirators, helmets and laser pointers and incredibly cheap prices — resources
needed to resist an increasingly hostile and militarized Hong Kong police force.
Gas masks filters and this is a bicycle helmet from Taiwan.
It's this kind of solidarity that I see everywhere in the city. And yet, as the
situation becomes more complicated, there's a growing dark side to the group dynamics on the streets.
While Carrie Lam's government is considered the enemy
that protesters are fighting, frustration is more and more directed toward Beijing
and the Chinese Communist Party.
And some Hong Kongers have become increasingly hostile towards Chinese people and businesses.
All these promise were made 22 years ago by Beijing with the Sino-British Joint Declaration,
is an international treaty.
And all these promises , it's very fragile.
It's just, it's just as fragile as a paper.
Whenever you poke it, it's broken, and then
there is nothing between us and Beijing to be honest.
They could keep forcing their values,
forcing their culture,
forcing whatever they the system they use in China
to adopt, like to deploy in Hong Kong.
And then this is violating the "One Country, Two Systems."'
The unrest has turned into a war of cultures and a fight for Hong Kong's
unique identity defined by judicial financial and political independence.
More than a million Chinese mainlanders have migrated to Hong Kong since Britain
returned the territory to China in 1997.
Yeah, and also the :invasion" of Chinese
people both by you know the Chinese tourists and the immigrants from China from mainland China.
I mean my father was a new immigrant then but for for them at
those days they were willing to to join the community. They were willing to you
know become a Hong Konger. But nowadays, those Chinese people they they keep
speaking their own dialects, the keep speaking Mandarin. They don't want to
learn about the Hong Kong culture. They don't want to be a part of it. They want to change our culture.
In recent years, tens of thousands of surveillance cameras have
gone up and China's influence in the city government has grown.
Many Kongers are terrified of this transformation.
I've got a lot of friends who have got nearly depressed.
I mean I myself got nearly depressed at certain points, you know, throughout these four months.
We're really worried because we anticipate that if we lose, if the movement
ends without any concrete, possible, like promises, or really some real changes, we will be all caught.
I am tired. I am exhausted. But I feel like spending
all this time and the role I have in this movement, I'm not allowed to be very
emotional. So every second I'm thinking about ways to make something creative, to
make our protest more effective, outsmart the Beijing government.
There is no rest in this movement. It's, you keep going on, keep going on, you keep
going on, until one day we thought we got our five demands.
The people of Hong Kong are hurting. They've sacrificed their security, time and money, but most importantly,
they've sacrificed what many of us take for granted: normality.
While it's easy to think this conflict is an internal affair for
20-somethings armed with umbrellas and laser pointers, it is a cautionary tale for all of us.
China's economic power is strangling
free speech worldwide,
demonstrating this war is being fought not just in the streets of Hong Kong
but in business arts and culture everywhere.