It took far longer than 7 minutes to get from Victoria Park
to this point in Causeway Bay by foot yesterday!
Until yesterday, I had never ever walked on
Lockhart Road on a protest march before :O
The scene on Harcourt Road last night :)
I live in a fairly conservative part of Hong Kong and often suspect that I'm the only person in my building who goes to pro-democracy protests.
So imagine my surprise yesterday afternoon when, after the elevator
doors opened for me to get inside, I saw that nearly everyone already
inside the elevator were dressed in black -- the designated color for yesterday's protest march
-- and I wasn't the only one who got out and headed in the direction of
Victoria Park -- the protest march's scheduled start venue --
afterwards.
A
day earlier, a couple of friends and I had discussed our worries that
some people would decide to drop their protest efforts after Carrie Lam announced the suspension of the anti-extradition bill
that has had so many Hong Kongers up in arms. One reason was that
gullible individuals might have looked upon it as a major concession on
the part of her government even though it wasn't an outright withdrawal
of the proposed bill that would allow for legal China extraditions in the future. And in the wake of the
unprecedented level and amounts of police brutality that took place in
front of cameras and the media on the streets of Admiralty on Wednesday,
there also was the possibility of other folks being scared off taking
part in protests (despite the vast majority of them being overwhelmingly
peaceful and non-violent).
The
closer I got to Victoria Park though, the more I got to realizing that
my doubts about there being a good turnout were unfounded. And long
before the protest's end, I knew that the turnout was more sizeable than
the previous Sunday's -- which already had been one of the largest that there has ever been in Hong Kong!
Once more, like with the anti-extradition bill protest marches that had taken place in April
and last week, the organizers felt obliged to begin the march earlier
than scheduled because of the greater than expected numbers of people
who had turned up some time before the protest's official start time.
Unlike the case for quite a while though, yesterday's protesters had
been allowed to assemble on Victoria Park's football pitches. (In fact,
my records show that this was the first time in some three years that this was so.) And for the first time ever, all the lanes of Causeway Road were open to protesters right from the start of the march!
With
all the lanes of Causeway Road and Hennessy Road opened for the use of
the protesters, and sections of the likes of Lockhart Road, Jaffe Road,
Gloucester Road and Connaught Road opened up as supplemental protest
march routes, I literally found myself marching along new protest ground
for parts of yesterday's event -- whose protesters were now also
calling for the condemnation of this week's many instances of police
brutality and the withdrawal of the designation of Wednesday's protests
as riots and along with the withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill,
and Carrie Lam's resignation. But if you thought that all this extra
space meant that movement along the protest route was much smoother than
easier than last week, here's letting you know that it was far from the
case.
Rather
than this being the fault of the police, however, the fact of the
matter was that the streets and roads were so packed with protesters
that there often really wasn't much room to move! All in all, it was
estimated that some 2 million protesters -- more than 25 percent of Hong Kong's population of 7 million!
-- turned up to be seen and heard over the course of yesterday's march
between Victoria Park and the Government headquarters in Admiralty!!
Having
started moving out of Victoria Park at 2.45pm (15 minutes ahead of the
3pm scheduled start), I only made it to the front of Sogo, the Japanese
department store that's a Causeway Bay landmark, after 6.20pm. And it
wasn't until approximately 8.30pm that my group of friends got to Harcourt Road -- where I had last been on Wednesday afternoon
and had got to thinking, after the events that unfolded later that day,
that I never would have the privilege to sat foot on ever again.
Before leaving Admiralty, we had one last thing to do: go to honor the protester whose death on Saturday night
stunned a city already in shock at the events of the past few days.
And because the past few days' events have left us all feeling like we
can't take anything for granted any more, I spent the rest of yesterday
hoping that there would be no outbreak of violence -- and was so very
relieved upon waking up and checking the news to find that was not so,
and that peace has prevailed throughout today too.
All in all, I think it helped that the police appear to have not only reined themselves in since Wednesday's insanity
but actually have a minimal presence at yesterday's protest march. And
I think it says so much that because -- not inspite -- of their general
absence from the scene, the protesters were not only peaceful and in
good spirits but also incredibly patient; with this mega protest march having been the very rare Hong Kong protest march where I didn't hear demands of "hoi lo"
(Cantonese for "open up the road") even once in what turned out to be
the seven hours or so (if I include the time spent getting into, and
waiting at, Victoria Park and such) that I spent taking part in the
protests yesterday!
Something
else very noticeable about yesterday's protests was that even while
many of the participants were very upset and angry with Carrie Lam and
the police, these emotions have actually been channelled in a most
positive manner to produce actions that have left much of the world in awe and admiration.
Long may this continue, and I sincerely hope -- and it's worth noting
that I'm feeling far more hopeful than I was this time last week or any
day of the past week -- that all these efforts will end up not being in
vain.
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