ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 396 (ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

[defrog]

What a year it’s been.

 

Not 2020 (although yes, that too) – I mean the last 12 months here in Hong Kong.

 

One year ago today, over 1 million people marched on the streets demanding the withdrawal of a proposed Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) that would allow Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to mainland China. Despite the fact that it was the largest turnout for a protest of any kind since 1989, the govt said no. And so the anti-ELAB movement began – and of course blossomed into something much, much bigger.

 

And one year later, where are we now?

 

Technically, the protests themselves tapered off after December 2019 for a number of reasons – COVID-19, of course, but I think it was also due to two key events: (1) the District Council elections, in which pro-democracy candidates took every district except one, and (2) the Battle of PolyU, which was so intense (and traumatic for most of the protesters there) that relatively few people fancy the prospect of a rematch.

 

Also, the police have taken advantage of the lull to formulate a more proactive strategy of ruthlessly shutting down protests before they can rev up into something bigger. All anti-govt protests are essentially considered illegal now, and disproportionate violence, mass arrests of innocent people and attacks on journalists are justified by the police force’s massive propaganda campaign portraying the protest movement in general as a foreign-funded terrorist campaign.

 

Which in itself is the justification Beijing is now using to impose a national security law on HK for the explicit purpose of enabling HK and Beijing to deal with protesters the same way Beijing deals with dissent of any kind – secret trials, forced confessions, re-education camps, basically everything China already does to Uighurs in Xinjiang. The NSL not only effectively kills off One Country Two Systems as a human-rights/democracy preservation mechanism (which was generally the point of it), it also changes the game in terms of the protests. It’s one thing to put pressure on the HK govt, which at least has a modicum of democracy and free speech. It’s quite another to do the same to a viciously totalitarian dictatorship that’s out to make a very clear point: we run this dump, we will always have the last word, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

 

Sure, this was probably always true in the long term. But we thought we had more time before Beijing went for the nuclear option. Turns out not.

 

So the two big questions before us are:

 

1. What now?

 

That depends who you ask. This piece in SCMP – in which Jeffie Lam interviewed protesters about their next move – is somewhat gloomy. This piece from The Guardian reflects a more defiant tone.

 

But the general gist is this: overall the protest movement isn’t ready to give up yet – we’ve come too far and too much is at stake. Also, Beijing’s aggressiveness essentially proves the protesters were right all along about its true intentions and the HK govt’s complicity. But no one’s really sure what the next move should be.

 

One ray of hope is the upcoming LegCo elections in September, which could go the way of the District Council elections. Meanwhile, many business sectors have been setting up unions for the express purpose of organizing strikes to pressure the govt.

 

Still, Beijing and the HK govt undoubtedly have plans for this too. We can safely assume the HK govt will do what it can to rig the LegCo elections in its favour by disqualifying as many pro-democracy candidates as possible (and indeed, it may be no coincidence that the NSL is expected to be in force just before the election). As for the strikes, the NSL will probably be used to deal with those – Carrie Lam is certainly displeased with the idea.

 

As for the street protests, those will probably continue – indeed, there was one this evening in Central to mark the anniversary, which of course the police shut down quickly – but they’re not likely to happen at the frequency or scale of 2019. Hong Kong Civil Right Front is planning a major march on July 1 (a.k.a. Handover Day), and the massive defiance of a ban on the Tiananmen Square candlelight vigil was an encouraging sign. But for the most part, I think street protests will be relatively limited.

 

Still, there are other ways to resist besides massive street marches. We’ve also seen the return of “sing with you” flash-mob protests in malls where students show up to sing the alternate national anthem, which also tend to get shut down swiftly. But every little bit helps.

 

Stephen Vines points out here that the one thing we have going for us is that history is not on the side of autocracies. Sooner or later, they go too far once they believe in their own infallibility:

 

… all autocracies, especially those in the modern age, have feet of clay. Their reliance on oppression to retain their position is inflexible and belies the weakness inherent in a system that only has one way of clinging to power.

 

Put simply, autocracies generally don’t last. It may take decades, but inevitably that weakness can be exploited if you poke at it long enough. You just gotta keep poking.

 

So whatever form resistance takes, the important thing is to keep resisting. Size and scale don’t matter – what matters is to undermine their authority any way you can (peacefully, when possible).

 

Sing songs in malls; stage work strikes when you can; support businesses who support the cause; wear black t-shirts; document brutality and injustice where you see it; make art; be creative. Go underground if you have to, but don’t stop. The one thing Beijing and Carrie Lam want more than anything in this world is for us to sit down, shut up and obey. Do none of these things.

 

Resist,

 

This is dF