The Hong Kong I care for and Hong Kongers whose courage I'm awed by

 

Just a small section of the hundreds of thousands of people 

holding lit candles at Victoria Park on June 4, 2014

 

Keith Richburg wrote in the Washington Post yesterday about there now being two Hong Kongs.  "One Hong Kong is populated by bankers and financial services professionals, real estate developers and property owners, and businesspersons whose primary pursuit is trade with mainland China. In this universe, times are good and getting better."  

 

I have banker, financial services professional and property owning friends but by and large, that is not my Hong Kong.  Instead, I am far more familiar with the other Hong Kong that Richburg delineats: that which "is populated by people in the public space — politicians, journalists, teachers, labor leaders, artists, filmmakers, those active in civil society groups as well as many students and young people. To them, Hong Kong has become unrecognizable, a place where dissent is crushed and debate stifled. They see no future here and no hope."

 

"Many from this universe are voting with their feet", Richburg notes.  "Nearly 90,000 people have left Hong Kong in the past year, the biggest net outflow in more than half a century since records were kept, leading to a steep 1.2 percent drop in the population."  A few days ago, I saw boxes piled in the reception area of my building.  When I asked the security guard on duty if people were moving in, he shook his head and told me that the boxes belonged to a family moving out -- and, without prompting, added that they were migrating to the United Kingdom, then asked me if I was planning to leave Hong Kong soon too.    

 

Conversations about leaving have become really common in recent months.  Hong Kong has long been a city of comings and goings.  But the goings really have accelerated over the past year or so -- and the sense people are getting is that the vast majority of new arrivals to Hong Kong these days and for the foreseeable future will be from Mainland China.  And I think it says much that a friend's answer to my question of what would prompt her to decide to leave the only part of the world she has ever lived in is "When all my neighbors are Mainlanders", something she can foresee being the case within the next two or three years.  Ditto re Richburg reporting that "As one longtime expatriate businessman here wryly told me, “China wants to keep Hong Kong. They just want to get rid of the Hongkongers.”"     

 

In addition to getting Hong Kongers to leave Hong Kong, it seems that the authorities also intent on making space for new arrivals by way of imprisoning an untold number of Hong Kongers.  Speaking of which: today marks the one year anniversary of People Power's Tam Tak-chi having been put behind bars.  And he's got a way to go before he has a chance to be free since his sedition trial will not resume until October 18th and is not expected to reach a verdict until November, and he is one of the 47 democrats charged under the national security law for taking part in and/or organizing the July 2020 primaries for the still postponed Legislative Council elections.   

 

I hate to say but it's looking very likely that Hong Kong's political prisoner numbers will soon be added to by those members of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China who are currently still not in prison.  This is because the organizers of the (previously) annual June 4th candlelight vigil in Victoria Park came out yesterday and stated that it will not cooperate with a request from the national security police to hand over financial and operational information.  

"Your white terror ends here. We will not transmit the fear to others", Alliance committee member Chow Hung-tung announced to the authorities.  Their bravery awes me, especially because they surely know that their defiance might well result in their being heavily penalized.  

Over on Twitter, a Hong Konger who goes by the handle Jasnah Kholin - 8964- ACAB wrote that "i've ranted a lot about the sheer ineptitude & stunning cowardice of so many terrible people in [Hong Kong], yet i feel like i don't do enough to highlight the bravery of those here w/principles like @zouxingtong [i.e., Chow Hung-tung]. it's people like her & the rest of @hka8964 [i.e., the Alliance] that are HK at its best."  To which I'd like to add that the League of Social Democrats' Raphael Wong -- who already is serving time in a Hong Kong prison as of last week for his role in an extradition bill protest which took place in October 2019 -- is one more of those Hong Kongers whose courage and principled stance is extremely impressive.

 

Something that also is quite awe-inspiring is Wong's optimism.  To be sure, he (too) accepts that "for now, the legislative struggle is “finished“" and "for now, Hongkongers need to “retreat from the political front”[, albeit] without becoming completely apolitical".  But he continues to hold on to the belief that "Future activists and political talents will emerge when the time comes again."  

 

Right now, that time is not looking like it'll be coming all that soon.  Instead, it is looking like further repression will be the order of the day for some time, with the attacks against the democracy-loving section of Hong Kong civil society coming pretty much daily now.  (Today's most high profile setback: the announcement by the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund that it's immediately halting the collection of donations as the Alliance for True Democracy, the group whose bank account it uses, said it would no longer execute its payment requests in the wake of the national security police announcing that they were investigating the two organizations and ordering them to hand over information, including details of donors and recipients.)   

 

Incidentally, Raphael Wong's words put into my mind the story of the 47 ronin of Tokugawa Japan that I first learnt about by way of Kenji Mizoguchi's 1941 masterwork , and whose graves at Sengakuji I visited and prayed at some years back.  And yes, I can't help but wonder whether it's a film that many (more) Hong Kongers will consider viewing some time -- though probably not on a big screen in the future since it might well be one of those cinematic works that the Hong Kong film censors will decide is a threat to national security!