Stumbling across a Reuters feature about Hong Kong students protesting the tyranny of China, I wondered what the heck was going on. As far as I knew, in today’s Hong Kong any but the most sterile and meaningless, government-sanctioned protests are now impossible.
The mystery was solved in about two seconds. The feature, a collage of 12 captioned photos, had been published in 2019 (“Hong Kong students protest during graduation,” November 7, 2019).
Graduates wearing Guy Fawkes masks attend a graduation ceremony at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, November 7. The students defied a ban on masks that the government imposed last month in a bid to curb sometimes violent unrest that has rocked the Chinese-ruled city for more than five months. Dressed in formal graduation gowns, many of about 1,000 students chanted as they walked to the hill-top ceremony, near the New Territories town of Sha Tin, calling for the government to respond to protesters’ “five demands, not one less” that include universal suffrage in choosing the city’s leader.
According to a Hong Kong Free Press article published in June 2020:
“Five demands, not one less” gained popularity at the end of last June following the death of protester Marco Leung, who fell from a height at Pacific Place in Admiralty on June 15. Sporting a now-symbolic yellow poncho, his protester banner has been credited with forming the basis of the movement’s five demands. It included the withdrawal of the extradition bill, retraction of the “riot” characterisation, release of students and the injured, and Lam’s resignation as chief executive—later replaced with calls for an investigation into police behaviour. The fifth demand for dual universal suffrage—for both [the legislative council] and the chief executive—was also added.
A couple of the graduates shown in the 2019 Reuters feature were wearing Winnie the Pooh costumes and Xi Jinping masks and holding signs saying FREE CHINA.
Within a year of that graduation ceremony, the National Security Law would bring a quick end to all such public protest in Hong Kong. One has to hope that many of the graduates managed to escape to other lands. But many are probably still there. Maybe some of them are in jail.
