Protesters wary of Hong Kong government’s offer of talks | Asian Correspondent

Protesters wary of Hong Kong government’s offer of talks | Asian Correspondent
 Michele Penna Oct 17, 2014

A pro-democracy protester is arrested by riot police in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. Pic: AP

On October 16, Hong Kong authorities announced that they are willing to have a discussion with the protesters. C. Y. Leung, the city’s Chief Executive and the foremost target of protesters’ anger, told journalists that the government would begin talks as soon as they could, “hopefully within the following week.”

Doubts concerning the government’s true willingness to have a meaningful dialogue surfaced even before the Chief Executive had finished his talk, for he immediately excluded the possibility of changing the electoral law approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee. In his own words, “politics is the art of the possible and we have to draw a line between possibilities and impossibilities.” This morning, the police reportedly cleared the protest site at Mongkok, a sign that the government might simply be trying to buy time and suppress the movement.

On the streets of Admiralty, it was hard to find anyone who believed that the administration could be trusted. “I do not think it will be useful; they will not accept our ideas,” commented two girls sitting on a concrete wall on the main street. “They won’t change their minds.”

“We have been asking for what Hong Kong wants for 10 years and there has been no change”, said a protester who told us his name was Danny. “They’ll have some ridiculous condition,” he argued, “and the talks will flounder.”

The fact that last week’s talks, which had been offered and scheduled by the government, were called off the day before they were supposed to be held – on Oct. 10 – did not help boost confidence. “I think they just want the people to think the government is ready to compromise, but they do not really want to change anything,” complained one man. “They always listen to Beijing; they cannot object to anything the central government says. They just want to improve their careers and do not really care about making people in Hong Kong better off.”

Together with a girl who was sitting close by, they presented a grim picture of the future: “Many things in Hong Kong are getting worse: the media, the economy, property prices. It is an unsatisfactory situation for the people. We are seeing Hong Kong becoming more and more like the mainland, and we do not want that.”

To be fair to the government, there is truth in what Mr. Leung said in his speech. At the end of the day, it is Beijing that calls the shots. Since Beijing is completely averse to anything even remotely resembling separatism – like a Hong Kong administration out of its control – the chances of modifying current laws are slim.

Protesters know this well. In interviews with the Asian Correspondent, many mentioned that, willing or not, authorities have their hands tied when it comes to meaningfully changing the electoral process. “I think even if they are being honest about their desire to talk, they do not have the power to do so,” said a protester who said his name was Douglas. This is both the saddest and brightest characteristic of the protests: many are taking to the streets knowing that they will not get what they want- but they still go out and try to make their message heard.

Why Hong Kong’s protesting students are more than just dreamers | Asian Correspondent

Why Hong Kong’s protesting students are more than just dreamers | Asian Correspondent
 Michele Penna Oct 16, 2014 

Pro-democracy students work on their studies at their occupied intersection in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong, Wednesday. Pic: AP.

Students taking to the streets in Hong Kong have been widely described as ‘too idealistic,’ ‘too radical’ or ‘wanting things too quickly.’ A lot of adjectives and, unfortunately, they are mostly wrong.

Among those who have claimed that students should pay closer attention to the real world are some notable figures. In a video interview with Bloomberg, Regina Ip, the city’s former security chief, contended that people should “engage the government in a rational and pragmatic manner.” Protesters, by not doing so, are obviously not being ‘realistic.’ (Speaking of which, Ms Ip stated in the same interview that the protest would go on for a couple of days, and that was on Sept. 29.)

Movie star Jackie Chan weighed in too when he called on people to “return to rationality.” “Hong Kong’s bright tomorrow requires everyone’s support and hard work,” he said, arguing,“I am willing to work hard with everyone and return to rationality, to face the future, love our country, love our Hong Kong.”

Students might not attach too much importance to Mr. Chan’s words, since he has recently gained quite a bit of fame for being a supporter of Beijing’s policies. But even less notable figures sometimes see the protesters as detached from real politics. Mr. Fong, an old businessman we happened to meet over lunch, said he did not support the movement because, while not wrong in principle, it was too radical: “You have to take Xi Jinping into account, what will he say of this?” He also told us that “the students want their goals realized right now, but that’s not politics.”

All of this hardly reconciles with what people tell you at sit-ins and rallies. “No, I don’t think the government will accept talks,” a student told us a couple of days ago. “Maybe in front of the media they say they want to, but it is not true. They do not want to talk to anybody.” Why, then, was he protesting? “Because we want to tell everyone what we want. I think our focus is to increase awareness in the world.”

Last Friday, during the rally, Jason Lam – the media artist who uses a projector to screen messages of support for the movement on Hong Kong’s streets – took a very minimal approach: he thought that if the government were to agree to a meaningful dialogue it would be a ‘true success,’ but he said he did not too much hope for that to happen.

Ms. Map Tang was even blunter: “It’s a lost battle, we all know that.” Yet, she did not have any intention of leaving her plastic mattress and her yellow ribbon – the protesters’ badge these days. Ms. Tang also showed realism when it came to the students’ decisions. She argued that she believes the movement would make mistakes. “There is no true freedom without errors,” she pointed out, quoting Gandhi.

At the end of the day, what most people told Asian Correspondent is that their main goal is to let the world know that Hong Kongers do have an issue with their political system and that they care for, well, more than just money, as the stereotype goes. From that perspective, it would be hard to look down on them as dreamers. They have already won the battle, conquering the front pages of international newspapers and forcing themselves into pundits’ discussions.

Sure enough, some do believe that the government will cave at some point and that Beijing will somehow close both its eyes on the city’s flagrant defiance. Experts and pretty much everybody else think they are wrong. But most also believed that a communist party could not maintain its rule and have a capitalist economy – and look at what has happened in the People’s Republic. And, in any case, isn’t hope supposed to never die?

Hong Kong protests regain momentum after government snub | Asian Correspondent

Hong Kong protests regain momentum after government snub | Asian Correspondent
 Michele Penna Oct 12, 2014 

Pro-democracy protesters attend a rally in the occupied areas outside government headquarters in Hong Kong’s Admiralty, Friday. Pic: AP.

At around 8pm on Friday the crowd in Admiralty had already swelled to thousands of people. And it keeps growing larger. To grasp the trend, you just need to look at the subway entrance and check where people go: many stroll toward the streets, only few away from them. At the end of the evening, thousands of people will have attended the rally promoted by Occupy Central, the Hong Kong Students Federation and Scholarism. The presence of police forces is small. Tiny units patrol the area. But even they soon disappear: it will not be a night of pepper spray, after all.

On one of the bridges – they are occupied, too – activists fabricate small yellow umbrellas and spread them on the ground in long lines. “We do it to support democracy,” says a middle-aged woman as she holds up one of her creation.

Down one staircase, protesters have covered the walls with multicolored stickers showing support for the movement, satirizing officials or just expressing patriotic feelings for the city: a sight sure to galvanize any protester and to anger any pro-government official. But not many officials are out tonight, and the stickers elicit a great deal of attention.

At the base of the staircase we meet Jason Lam, a young media artist who is one of the movement’s graphic minds. Together with a friend, Mr. Lam gathers messages of support from the internet and uses a projector to show them above the crowd. They location often. Tonight they are pointing their equipment against a bare concrete wall at the feet of one of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers, right behind the statue of a man holding an umbrella which has become an icon of Occupy Central.

“There was a protest on July 1 and 500 people were arrested for just sitting down in public. At the time, I was watching them and I felt very angry because the police was violent,” he says. “Afterwards, my friend and I discussed what to do.” That is how the website  emerged. The site receives messages of support from around the world – over 35,000 in just two weeks, contends Mr. Lam – and the best ones are chosen to be shown during rallies. The page was hacked last week, but it is now running again. Mr. Lam says he has no idea who did it.

In the center of the occupied area, student leaders – if they can be called so, since what has become known as the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ makes a point of being leaderless – are holding speeches. “Hong Kong is not dead,” says one speaker, his words amplified by loudspeakers. The crowd cheers. “Hong Kong is rising,” he goes on. Hands clap, then a moment of silence. “Hong Kong is not dead!” he insists, the pitch rising, his tone growing harsher. The crowd responds with a booming applause.

Protesters say they are mostly satisfied with the way Friday’s rally turned out. After the local government refused to hold talks, some thought the movement was doomed. “It’s a success, the largest number of people in many days,” says a man who identified himself as Terence. “I thought it would die down, but it’s amazing, they all came back.” A student points out that “tonight was not bad”. “We are satisfied by the amount of people,” he says.

Some are more cautious, stressing that despite the large number of people out tonight, real success will come only if the government accepts to dialogue with the people.

While there is no certainty about the future of the protests or the chances that the government will back down, the response of the people on Friday night demonstrates that Chief Executive C.Y. Leung’s plan to thwart the protest has failed.

The government had accepted talks with the students last week, after an attempt to tear-gas them away from the streets backfired. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, however, called off talks on Thursday – the day before he was supposed to meet with the protesters – on the grounds that the students had gone too far and violated the terms of the agreement with the government. Everyone seems to believe that the opposite is true: with the number of people on the streets dwindling last week, the administration felt confident they could afford to ignore the movement without consequences. Not so. Many Hong Kongers are dissatisfied with the current rules and have come out again to demand universal suffrage.

The government’s plan, for now, has crumbled, and the image that more than anything else embodies the current situation is that of a young man dressed in a black t-shirt sitting on a fence, holding a sign with the word ‘full’ written on it. So many people flocked to Admiralty that the organizers had to close the central section of the occupied street.

China media blame foreign meddling for Hong Kong protests | Asian Correspondent

 Michele Penna, Oct 10, 2014

A student pro-democracy activist holds up a placard at the protest site, Thursday, Oct. 2. Pic: AP.

If you had no other choice but to stick to China’s state media – and, given censorship, that is the case for quite a few people on the mainland – you might believe that protests in Hong Kong are entirely staged by hostile foreign forces bent on destabilizing the government.

According to Hong Kong University’s China Media Project, “the foreign conspiracy frame has been one of the most widely used in Chinese coverage… of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.” On the People’s Daily, China’s most authoritative newspaper, the deputy head of Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Mo Jihong, informs us that “behind the back of occupy central you can see the ‘shadows’ of some western countries. [..] There are elements of foreign forces’ involvement behind the back of Hong Kong’s street politics.” And that is “a very dangerous sign, it has constituted a serious threat to the future prosperous and stable development in HK.”

The Global Times – usually more direct and less compromising than its peers – only hints at how “young people are susceptible to the instigation of the internal and external malicious forces….” We do not know who those powers are, but a reasonable guess would be the United States and, this being Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, too.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi himself has touched on the topic of potential foreign meddling. He has been much more nuanced, as one could expect from a high official, but did not fail to bring up the topic during a visit to the United States. Speaking to his American counterparts, he warned Washington “to speak and act with caution, abide by the promise of non-interference with China’s internal affairs, and send no wrong signals to the outside world.”

Foreign influences rarely fail to spring up in Chinese media to play the part of bogeyman. The apparent danger of foreign intrusions and machinations has been a constant in modern Chinese history. The fear that foreigners are bent on damaging the country dates back to the opium wars, and has developed through years of vexations – the age which, to use a common phrase in Chinese rhetoric, is deemed the ‘century of humiliation.’ “Nationalism born of humiliation,” says Orville Schell, one of America’s foremost experts on China, is “like genetic material you can’t get off the genome. It keeps re-expressing itself.”

It is surprising to discover just for how long the sense of humiliation and the loathing of foreign intrusion have been able to survive. There are two factors, however, that help explain this phenomenon. One is how tragic Chinese modern history has been: in an interview with the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Mr. Schell argues that to understand why these feelings still exist you have to consider “how deep the humiliation was and how strong nationalism became as a result.”

And then, of course, there are less historical and more political factors, for international boogeymen come in handy when the government needs to explain situations such as the current crisis in Hong Kong take place. Nationalism can be used to inoculate the masses against a possible contagion from the riotous city, for you would not support protesters if you knew they are stooges of foreign powers, would you?

China stifles dissent at home amid Hong Kong protests | Asian Correspondent

China stifles dissent at home amid Hong Kong protests | Asian Correspondent
 Michele Penna Oct 03, 2014

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters gather at Hong Kong’s Mongkok district Monday evening. Pic: AP.

“The Chinese authorities must immediately and unconditionally release all those detained for peacefully showing support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.” Amnesty International delivered a tough message on October 1 – China’s National Day, marking the anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic – but it shed the light on a sideshow of the protest in Hong Kong: what is happening to those who support the protesters from the mainland.

According to the humanitarian organization, “at least 20 people have been detained by police in several cities in mainland China over the past two days for posting pictures online with messages of support for the protesters, shaving their heads in solidarity, or for planning to travel to Hong Kong to participate in the protests.” Another 60 had ‘tea with the police,’ as questionings by authorities are informally called.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a coalition of Chinese and international human rights non-governmental organizations, reported similar news: “the occupation of several areas in Hong Kong, including parts of its financial and political center, has inspired many Chinese on the mainland and encouraged them to speak up for democracy, with many photos appearing on social media of activists holding signs in support of Hong Kong and demanding constitutional democracy for the territory. Police in China have harassed and warned activists in many cities, concerned that they may try to travel to Hong Kong or take to streets to protest.”

Among those who have been detained, the group wrote, are activist Luo Yaling, who reportedly “was taken away by police on September 30 after she expressed support online for the protests in Hong Kong,” and Wang Long – arrested on the charge of creating a disturbance on September 29. Chinese Human Rights Defenders also reported that on September 30, Guangzhou police “seized dozens of activists and citizens who gathered in the Martyr Memorial Gardens to show support for the Hong Kong protestors.”

The practice of arresting activists for a brief period of time whenever a sensitive event takes place is certainly not unknown, and it was perhaps to be expected at a time when Beijing is confronting a challenge to its leadership. People, and especially students, have marched in their thousands to protest against the central government’s decision to prevent the free election of the city’s Chief Executive.

That is not only an implicit declaration of hostility toward the ‘one country, two systems’ which has been the official policy invented by Beijing to manage the integration of the city back into the People’s Republic of China. It is also a show of defiance which could inspire others on the mainland, turning a local event into a much larger one.

In the eyes of the government, mainland activists must appear as dangerous fifth columns of the protest, the carriers of a virus which could spread northward from the former British Colony. For, if William Nee, one of the Amnesty’s own researchers, is right in saying that “the rounding up of activists in mainland China only underlines why so many people in Hong Kong fear the growing control Beijing has in their city’s affairs,” it is also true that the arrests expose why the turmoil in Hong Kong rattles the central government. And, while differences certainly exist, the protest is bound to remind both its supporters and its antagonizers of those fateful days in June, 1989, on another square, with other students.