Lo took part in most of the demonstrations often marked by violent confrontations, witnessed a mob attack at a railway station, designed posters to promote the protests and would not go to bed without checking all the major news outlets for the latest updates.
He was not directly affected when Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 in the wake of the unrest, triggered by a now-withdrawn extradition bill, until one day he realised he and his friends no longer shared news on social media and had started to watch their words.
Six of his eight close friends who met in university also moved out of the city one after another, with most heading to Canada which had offered Hongkongers a “lifeboat” emigration pathway.
Lo soon decided to pack his bags, too, to take up an offer in Dubai.
“Hong Kong has become a soulless city to me, and I don’t see any future for it,” Lo said. “I do not want my anchor to be stuck in Hong Kong, which would force me to put all my energy and everything there.”
The feeling of not belonging also resonated among many who took part in the 2019 protests, the start of which marked its fifth anniversary on Sunday, and are now picking up the pieces of their disrupted lives. On June 9 of that year, an estimated 1 million residents took to the streets to demonstrate against the now-withdrawn extradition bill.
‘Keen to move on’
A total of 10,279 people, aged between 11 years and 87, were arrested in connection with offences including rioting, illegal assembly, common assault, arson and criminal damage during the protests.
Five years on, many are waiting for their cases to be settled.
Declining to confirm whether they had all since been closed, police this week said 2,961 cases out of the total had either gone through or were undergoing judicial procedures, with 2,328 of them having to face legal consequences.
The judiciary, meanwhile, said around 93 per cent of more than 2,320 protest cases had been brought to court as of February and that most of the outstanding ones had been set for trial this year and 2025.
Among them, an ex-member of a now-dissolved pro-independence group was handed down a 12-year prison term for a bomb plot, the heaviest sentence meted out to date.
Last year, 950 people were sent to prison for offences during the protests or violating the national security law, an increase of 15 per cent from 829 in 2022.
Hong Kong has undergone a sea change in its political environment and the government has described the new era as a transition from “chaos to order”, with the focus now on restoring prosperity.
The political scene has fundamentally altered since Beijing imposed the national security law on the city in June 2020.
The once feisty opposition has been decimated, with many of its core leaders either behind bars or overseas. The legislature is now fully made up of those deemed “patriots” after an electoral shake-up by Beijing. Protests are almost non-existent in the city.
In March, the city reinforced the 2020 legislation with a new domestic national security law as required under Article 23 of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.
With that in place and order restored, some academics have argued it is time for the government to embrace those young protesters who have mended their ways but are facing obstacles in securing jobs or resuming their studies.
Such a step would mark the start of much-needed reconciliation to heal the scars of the past, they said.
Paul Yip Siu-fai, director of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention under the University of Hong Kong (HKU), called for stronger rehabilitation and career support, as well as early release for inmates who had shown they had turned over a new leaf.
His centre has provided jobs for seven to eight such protesters at HKU in recent years.
Many of the arrested protesters had their own ideals and leadership qualities although they were misled, Yip said, stressing the need for the government to offer them a safety net, rather than casting them aside.
“To put it bluntly, they have no expectations of the government,” he said.
“After all, the government has locked them up and punished them so severely. But if you give them some care and some very tangible support, I think all of them will be very grateful.
“If you do it, you will do no harm or probably have a very unexpected gain.”
Academic William Hayward, who co-wrote an opinion piece with Yip nearly four years ago calling for some leniency for the young people arrested, said there was a lack of formal government policies to help protesters to reintegrate into society.
Hayward, dean of Lingnan University’s faculty of social sciences, said he hoped the government would treat young people “less as threats to our future and more as our future itself” as he felt national security concerns had been adequately addressed for now.
“They are keen to move on with their lives, and Hong Kong will be a better place if we help them do so,” he said.
In a reply to the Post, a government spokesman said the “large-scale riots in 2019” were the “Hong Kong version of colour revolution”, but underscored its support for rehabilitating offenders.
He said the Correctional Services Department had been making every effort to address the rehabilitation needs of those involved in the protests and “to promote reconciliation between them and the society”.
That included a specific programme aiming to help offenders “disengage from radical thoughts and violent behaviours through moral education and the re-establishment of positive values”, as well as collaboration with NGOs to assist those who had been jailed.
‘Becoming bystanders’
Former government minister Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, an adviser in public administration in the Education University of Hong Kong’s Asian and policy studies department, said the city missed an opportunity for closure by not carrying out a full review into the 2019 turmoil.
Cheung said the unrest was not purely a national security issue, as it also reflected many other deep-seated social contradictions. Not everyone on the streets was unpatriotic or pro-independence, he added.
“If we had the opportunity to do things like a review and reconciliation, it would actually have been a way to get out of the shadow of that time. But there is no chance now, and I don’t know if there will still be a chance,” said Cheung, who served as the transport and housing minister between 2012 and 2017.
Pointing to post-apartheid South Africa and the 1967 leftist riots in colonial Hong Kong, he said: “Because after any of these shake-ups, you will have some problems to deal with, and sometimes, we have to review what happened in the past, so that those people can move on … that is, to have closure.
“This is what South Africa did. When Mandela was president, they established a [truth and] reconciliation commission, and that was how it drew the closure.”
More pressingly, he said, authorities should also tackle a brewing problem in society of residents’ apparent apathy and disengagement following the 2019 upheaval.
Record-low turnouts have been recorded at elections following Beijing’s “patriots-only” overhaul and the decline has been especially pronounced in the 18-30 age group, falling to below 8 per cent in the 2021 Legco poll.
“Young people may be very confused about the current situation because they had once been very passionate, thinking they were able to make a difference. They’re now a little lost, probably as they’re not accepting the rules of the new era and can’t find a way out,” Cheung said.
He said it was very important for mainstream society to have a sense of engagement, because if residents did not participate, they would become indifferent bystanders.
“What we hope is to enable residents, especially the younger generation, to play the role of stakeholder rather than a bystander,” he said.
Since the protests, more than 144,400 Hongkongers – including many young families – have moved to the UK by seizing an emigration pathway offered by Britain, while tens of thousands have also flocked to Canada and Australia under similar schemes.
Population data comparisons show there were 44,500 fewer Hongkongers in the prime 34-56 age group in 2023 than in the 30-52 segment in 2019, suggesting some had moved elsewhere in the four years since the protests erupted.
UK government figures also show Hongkongers in their 40s are the biggest group applying for the British National (Overseas) emigration route, followed by those in their 30s and 50s.
Legislator Gary Zhang Xinyu, who has helped people arrested over their involvement in the 2019 unrest, said the protests had led to a rapid deterioration of trust and relationships in society.
But he disagreed residents had become withdrawn or indifferent to politics, attributing their reticence instead to being more careful about airing their views as they were fearful of treading on sensitive issues.
He said authorities and society should avoid moves that sent residents the wrong signal, pointing to cases where certain groups had agreements to rent venues cancelled or increased scrutiny on shops operated legally by people who supported the protests.
“This is a shame, as this leaves people guessing whether they have uttered something that has offended the emperor … I think we should not create this type of atmosphere,” he said.
Zheng Yanxiong, the director of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, said on Saturday that effectiveness and deterrence held the key for the city in making use of the two security laws, arguing there was still a lot of work to be done by law enforcement and the judiciary.
“Justice in the outcome cannot be substituted by justice in procedure or execution, let alone the dignity of the law with compassion,” he said at an event marking the fourth anniversary of the Beijing-decreed legislation.
New People’s Party chairwoman Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, the convenor of the government’s key decision-making Executive Council, said not everyone in society shared a need for “reconciliation”, which in itself was also not a “one-way street”.
“Young people ask for forgiveness and acceptance. How can that be possible if they are not reconciled to the reality that Hong Kong is part of China, under ‘one country, two systems’?” she said.
Ip, also a lawmaker, dismissed the notion that Hongkongers had now withdrawn from society.
“Every weekend, 300,000 people, including many young people, go north to enjoy what mainland cities have to offer. Is it fair to describe them as ‘cynical and withdrawn’?” she said.
“And there are many others working hard every day to improve their livelihoods. These people are not ‘cynical and withdrawn’.”
Lau Siu-kai, a consultant at semi-official Beijing think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said the central government would not change its new constitutional order built with the national security laws and the electoral overhaul. The ball was in the opposition supporters’ court to accept “political reality”.
While Beijing was unlikely to introduce any political reform to relax requirements for standing in elections in coming years, Lau argued the government could be more open and consider appointing moderate figures to its advisory bodies on non-political issues.
A ‘naive’ existence
The opposition Democratic Party can relate to Zhang’s point about hiring venues. It has not been able to hold a spring reception for members for the past two years, as different venues cancelled at the last minute without explanation, fuelling suspicion they had faced political pressure.
Previously the city’s biggest opposition party with representatives sitting in the legislature and district councils for over two decades, it no longer has any elected members following the political shake-up.
Last month, two of its former lawmakers were convicted of subversion over their participation in an unofficial “primary” election which the court found was part of a wider plot to “undermine, destroy or overthrow” the government by creating a constitutional crisis after taking over the legislature.
Three other party members pleaded guilty to the charge in the landmark national security case which involved 47 rising and leading opposition politicians and activists.
With essentially no income as donors stay away, the party recently further cut staff numbers. Chairman Lo Kin-hei said the real challenge the party faced was not financial constraints or the government’s indifference but whether residents still found it relevant or agreed with its values.
Conceding that the party had limited influence in the new political landscape, Lo warned that over time, governance in a city without an opposition would suffer.
“Most Hongkongers now do not want to engage in serious discussions and all they want to do is to make fun of government policies,” he said, calling it an understandable but unhealthy trend.
Pointing to the government’s recent suspension of a controversial waste-charging scheme which was due to be launched in August after an earlier postponement, Lo argued it might not necessarily have hit a dead end if civil society organisations were still thriving.
Different parties would have warned the government long before the launch to ramp up its preparatory works and other supporting facilities, he said, while citywide “waste-no-mall” recycling spots operated by volunteers would also have facilitated the policy.
Most of these spots had ceased operating in recent years.
With the civil movement at a low ebb, even opposition supporters had poured scorn on the party, calling members naive, if not silly, to believe their efforts mattered, especially when it indicated its intention to field candidates in revamped elections.
“We just want to maintain a voice representing Hongkongers in society, especially when everyone believes rational discussions no longer exist,” Lo said. “We just want to offer a form of presence in Hong Kong.”
* Name changed at the interviewee’s request
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2024-06-09 01:00:18Z
CBMiemh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnNjbXAuY29tL25ld3MvaG9uZy1rb25nL3BvbGl0aWNzL2FydGljbGUvMzI2NTkwOS9ob25nLWtvbmctcmViZWwtY2l0eS1uby1tb3JlLXJlZmxlY3RpbmctMjAxOS1wcm90ZXN0cy01LXllYXJz0gF6aHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuc2NtcC5jb20vbmV3cy9ob25nLWtvbmcvcG9saXRpY3MvYXJ0aWNsZS8zMjY1OTA5L2hvbmcta29uZy1yZWJlbC1jaXR5LW5vLW1vcmUtcmVmbGVjdGluZy0yMDE5LXByb3Rlc3RzLTUteWVhcnM
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