ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 398 (FEARLESS EDITION)
Given what I’ve posted about Hong Kong recently regarding the national security law - and what you may have heard/read in the news - it probably sounds like HK has become a totalitarian police state where we’re all forced to worship Xi Jinping and Carrie Lam, we need police permission to do anything, and making any negative comment about Xi, Lam or the police will result in negative feedback - cyberbullying, police harassment, a blast of pepper spray in yr mug, re-education camps, etc.
And, you know, kind of.
To be honest it’s not quite that bad. Not yet.
To be clear, there is definitely a deliberate chilling of speech and a curtailing of speech-related liberties - banning slogans, prohibiting schoolchildren from singing that song, yanking books off library shelves, arresting kids for silently waving blank placards, press self-censorship, etc. And of the 10 people who have been arrested under the NSL to date, most were for speechcrime.
The chief exception is the guy who crashed his motor scooter into some cops - he’s been charged with terrorism, even though available video strongly indicates that it was accidental, although he was also carrying a “Liberate Hong Kong / Revolution Of Our Times” flag, which is considered secession under the same law. (Important clarification: “trying to hit people with a motorbike” is not an act of terrorism or a violation of any other law when the police do it to protesters.)
So things aren’t good.
On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that many people here do support the govt and the NSL - or at the very least aren’t bothered by it, whether it’s because of self-interest, business reasons, political apathy or an unshakeable belief that It Can't Happen Here - HK’s rule of law will keep the authorities from abusing their power.
As for everyone else, there’s been talk about how HK is “dead”, the protesters lost, and we’re resigned to either shutting our traps or fleeing the country while we still can. Game over.
But resistance isn’t dead.
You can read this piece from Tom Grundy, co-founder of Hong Kong Free press, who has vowed to go down swinging in terms of media coverage and refusing to self-censor (clearly distinguishing HKFP from other English language outlets, particularly the South China Morning Post, which employs some excellent reporters but also has editors who have loudly celebrated the NSL in editorials).
Meanwhile, indie bookstores like Bleak House Books have vowed to stay open and sell whatever they want until the police come and take them away.
There’s also this op-ed from frontline reporter Karen Cheung, who notes that really, HK has always been a tough place to live, but that we always adapt somehow.
… not everything has disappeared. The bookshop near my flat posted a message on social media: “Life goes on, resist fear.” A reporter I know tweeted, “I’ll just try my best to pretend this law doesn’t exist, keep calm, and carry on.”
I don’t want to downplay how terrifying the national security law is. People were arrested under that law on the first day, some of them just for carrying a flag bearing suddenly “outlawed” slogans. Courts can deny bail and hold secret trials. No one knows how to navigate this new reality.
Yet people are already coming up with cheeky, humorous ways of circumventing the new rules, resisting the temptation to be too obedient and give in to the chilling effect. We will continue to find defiance in unexpected places.
If nothing else, according to Jessie Pang at Reuters, you’ll find it in the young people who voted (and in some cases ran) in the primary. They know that if anything is going to change, it’s up to them. They’re under no illusions that they’ll win, but they know that it’s better to try and fail than to give up, just as they know that the Establishment pan-Demos still tend to see this as a rules-based scenario, and that you can beat Beijing by using its own rules against it. The trouble is that Beijing not only doesn't respect the rules, but rewrites them at will and interprets them randomly to suit its needs.
So, while we can’t realistically do much about the NSL and whatever abuses will inevitably occur (and arguably already are), we can adjust to this reality and resist as best we can. Yes, things are likely to get worse in the coming weeks, and eventually even the pro-gov/BJ supporters will find out the hard way that they are not exempt. But that doesn't mean we might as well give up and accept it. If we can't win in the streets or at the polls, we can always refuse to live in fear.
Because they want us to live in fear. So let’s not do that.
Have a beer with fear,
This is dF
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