Preface i Liberate Hong Kong Pre f a c e Praise for Hong Kong Liberation demonstrations in Hong Kong in favour of that city’s continued existence as a Chris Patten, last British governor of Hong Kong “If you want to understand the raw mix of human emotions, frailties, soaring a struggle for freedom against tyranny entails, read this brilliant, captivating and inspiring book. Hong Kong is, without a shadow of a doubt, the new front this book shows, but in the balance of faults, those they struggle against have were promised at the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, our own freedoms are this is a very important book for anyone who values freedom, far beyond the small but inspiring city of Hong Kong.” Benedict Rogers, founder and chair of Hong Kong Watch “For too long Hong Kong’s citizens have been seen as apolitical and apathetic. Kong Tsung-gan changes all that with his sharp insights into the people who have made Hong Kong an emblem of resistance. He conveys a far deeper sense systems of control in what remains a colony are laid bare here.” Robert Templer, author of Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam iii Preface Liberate Hong Kong Stories from the freedom struggle Kong Tsung-gan An imprint of Mekong Review iii Lib e r ate Hong K o n g Copyright © 2020 Kong Tsung-gan First published in 2020 by Mekong (an imprint of Mekong Review) PO Box 417 Broadway, NSW 2007 Australia Website: https://mekongreview.com/ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-6488004-0-8 Cover photo Tyrone Siu iv Preface It’s not that we see hope and therefore we persist. It’s that through our persistence, hope is created. – protest maxim 黎明來到要光復這香港 同行兒女為正義時代革命 祈求民主與自由萭世都不朽 我願榮光歸香港 The dawn has come. Liberate Hong Kong, For justice, brothers and sisters, arm in arm, the revolution of our times. Our quest for freedom and democracy will never falter. May glory be to Hong Kong. – last verse of the anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” v Liberate Hong Kong To the freedom fighters for their determination, fortitude, courage and creativity in the pursuit of justice all sisters and brothers in the struggle, the 勇武 and the 和理非 for the unity and solidarity that have made us a force to be reckoned with all who have sacrificed and suffered for the greater good especially those whose lives were lost as well as the arrested, prosecuted and seriously injured the upstanding, generous people who protected and sheltered my loved ones and me when pursued by the police and thugs our children who may not inherit the earth but shall HK for whatever that’s worth Y for the shared struggle in the hope that one day we shall all be free. vi Preface Contents Preface vii The Battle of Lung Wo Road 1 Sanctuary 33 Running with the Boys 45 A Rioter 71 The Siege 101 Black Angels 137 See You at the Pot 179 A Timeline of the Hong Kong Protests 195 vii Liberate Hong Kong viii Preface Preface THIS IS MY third book on HK. The first book, Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong, is a 600-page history of the Umbrella Movement that one reader described as “exhausting”. The second book came out in March 2019, just months before the current protests. It’s called As long as there is resistance, there is hope: Essays on the Hong Kong freedom struggle in the post-Umbrella Movement era, 2014–2018. It tracks the major political developments in HK after the Umbrella Movement, in particular the many ways in which the Chinese Communist Party attempted to gain greater control, and brings the history of the city up to the current moment. When I contemplated writing about the current protests, they seemed too huge, a magnitude greater than the Umbrella Movement. The only way I could figure to get a handle on them was to write about the events I have experienced, the people I have known. The book is not all-encompassing or encyclopaedic, as Umbrella might be, but I hope it captures both the spirit of the protests and the many different aspects of a multifaceted movement. The title of this book, Liberate Hong Kong. It is one of the key protest slogans. The full slogan is “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times”. Eight Chinese characters: 光復香港 時代革命. It embodies the spirit of the protests. It can be seen and heard all over HK, scrawled in graffiti on walls, in white on black flags, chanted over and over again at every protest. Ever present, it echoes in your ears. ix Liberate Hong Kong It was first coined by Edward Leung Tin-kei in 2016. Leung was one of the young new leaders to emerge in the post-Umbrella era. He was the head of Hong Kong Indigenous, the most influential localist group. At the time, the slogan didn’t travel far. On the first day of Chinese New Year in February 2016, the police and protesters clashed in the streets of Mong Kok through the night. They were the most violent altercations between the police and citizens in HK since the Cultural Revolution- inspired leftist riots of the late 1960s. Leung and several dozen others were put on trial for “riot” and convicted. He was sentenced to six years in prison, one of the longest protest-related sentences ever in HK. Prison is where he has been during the protests and where he remains now. In 2016, Leung was considered by many a divisive figure. It would have been hard to imagine the so-called peaceful, rational protesters, especially those from the traditional pro-democracy parties, shouting his slogan out in the streets in 2019, spilling into 2020. That it has come to this is a sign of just how unified all of the factions of the freedom struggle have become, as well as of the power of the slogan’s words. The word “liberate” in the slogan can also be translated as “reclaim”. In Chinese, it’s 光復, which literally means “reclaim the light”. It has a strongly revolutionary air dating to the time of Republican efforts to overthrow the Qing dynasty at the turn of the twentieth century. That’s when the phrase was first used to connote political liberation. Of course, the fact would not have been missed by the Party that many of those early Republicans, including Sun Yat-sen, often regarded as the father of modern China, used the safe harbour of British colonial HK to launch the revolution. The fact that the Party and its HK puppet Carrie Lam felt compelled to attack the slogan showed just how spooked they were, for, after all, they’re Qing redux, the next dynasty ripe for overthrowing. The subtitle of the book is “Stories from the freedom struggle”. That is what follows. Each story stands alone. Some overlap. The focus of the stories reflects the leaderless ethos of the movement. None of the people who appear are prominent or well known. The stories attempt to evoke x Preface the experience, the lived texture of the struggle. They’re not centred on key events of the protests. Rather, those events emerge in the course of telling about the characters’ lives. I’ve written the stories in the midst of the protests, while they are still going on. It’s been difficult to find the time to write. I often felt so uncalm and upset that it took considerable will and discipline to settle down enough to concentrate. The stories were written fast and under intense and distracting circumstances. They emerged from scribbled notes and experiences that had just occurred. Thanks to publisher and editor Minh Bui Jones for the opportunity to write this book and share it with the world and for his affirming belief in the historical importance of the HK freedom struggle. Thanks as well to Tom Grundy who published an earlier version of “Sanctuary” in Hong Kong Free Press. Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times! xi Liberate Hong Kong xii Preface Names and identifying details have been changed. The freedom struggle goes on. HK is a city of masks. We look forward to the day when we can all remove them together. xiii Liberate Hong Kong xiv The Battle of Lung Wo Road The Battle of Lung Wo Road 是你教我們和平遊行是沒用的 It is you who taught us that peaceful protests do not work – graffiti by protesters on a column in the Legislative Council building, 1 July 2019 I MET FRANCIS through Nancy. It was at the memorial march for Liu Xiaobo. That’s how I remember when we met. Xiaobo died on 13 July 2017. The march was a couple of days after that, right before Nancy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Francis was much younger. Nancy and I had been involved in the freedom struggle for years. To us, Xiaobo’s death seemed like the end of an era. Nancy said she and Francis had got to know each other when they both were arrested at the Battle of Lung Wo Road. That was during the Umbrella Movement. When the police charged, they sat on the ground, old non-violent civil resistance style. Most of the others ran away. The police couldn’t catch anyone else, so they arrested Francis and Nancy 1 Liberate Hong Kong and a few others.