The nine months leading to Christmas 2019 saw Hong Kong's corporations, retailers and entrepreneurs struggle frantically to steer their businesses through one heavy swell after another.
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| Chanel's Keira Knightley smiles approvingly as the sun breaks through skyscrapers on chanting marchers filling the streets of HK's Central district |
The first wave was one of public marches against the Legislative Council's (LegCo's) proposal for an extradition treaty with China. This would allow the mainland to repatriate Persons of Interest who they felt had strayed beyond the secure embrace of the Giant Panda. Cynics asked why even discuss such a treaty given the casual swagger with which Chinese authorities already enter HK and leave with anyone they choose - without even a cursory heads-up to the HK authorities. A notable example from 2017 was Chinese / Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua who was escorted from his suite at Hong Kong's Four Seasons hotel without warning in full view of his own bodyguards. China made much of the fact that there was no struggle and that Xiao's processing through border immigration was peaceful; however this was never in much doubt since he seemed to have been unconscious and hooded during the whole process.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-renditions-kidnapping/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hongkong-billionaire-idUSKBN15Q09Q
Having woefully misjudged the public sentiment on extradition, HK's Legislative Council attempted to appease public outcry by allowing street marches on the issue.
https://www.chinadailyhk.com/articles/153/195/6/1576400422693.html
https://hongkongfp.com/2019/11/11/hong-kong-police-say-man-set-alight-arguing-protesters/
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3037243/hong-kong-father-two-burned-alive-after-chasing
Higher stakes required bolder tactics and caution was an early casualty. Attempts were made to capture firearms from police officers, leading to the first warning shots fired with live ammunition. Petrol bombs thrown at police vehicles rolled under family vehicles stuck in the traffic alongside.
People who had previously attended the marches or morally supported friends and family protesting the right to march started to concede that aimless destruction of public transport served no political purpose and that no good result could come of snatching a holstered weapon from a policeman. People began to ask if the protest movement had lost sight of its objectives.
To the credit of the police, great restraint was instructed and effectively maintained in the face of quite overwhelming pressure. There can be few countries in the world where a protester running to throw a burning petrol bomb over police lines would not be met with lethal force; yet it happened in Hong Kong on an almost daily basis. Instead large numbers of rubber bullets and bean bag rounds were used, a small number of which caused serious injuries, including an Indonesian reporter blinded permanently in one eye.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/blinded-indonesian-journalist-seeks-answers-hong-kong-police-191206033800684.html
With most people's calendars blocked out for Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year from the end of December 2019 to the end of January 2020, Hong Kongers' anticipation of a final, grand act of defiance to complete 2019 became palpable from early November. Speculation, expectation and tension escalated through every media platform, coffee shop and drinking den. Protesters selected the buildings of Hong Kong Polytechnic University on 17th November to make their last stand of the year.
An early attempt by police failed to take control of the situation as they tried to drive an armored car onto the campus. This was successfully repulsed with petrol bombs, prompting police to secure all building exits, initiating a siege. The now-familiar volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets were answered with petrol bombs and even improvised bows and arrows to the point where hospitals were overwhelmed with patients. After 3 days and nights of inconclusive fighting and damage to university property, a 10 day waiting game followed. Exhausted, hungry and unwashed, small groups of protesters made sporadic escape attempts. However most were overpowered and arrested with a few daring exceptions such as those repelling with zipwires from bridges or wading through sewer systems.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3039838/war-zone-prison-voices-polytechnic-university-siege-site
https://hongkongfp.com/2019/12/12/battle-scarred-lasting-impact-polyu-campus-siege-hong-kongs-protest-movement/
https://hongkongfp.com/2020/05/15/hong-kong-police-charge-14-with-rioting-over-university-campus-siege-1-wanted/
Observers estimate approx 1,300 people may have been caught up in some or all of the 10 day siege with 300 of these being minors and some even under 16. As the last remnants gave themselves up, two things became clear for the first time; the substantial support given to the protesters and their collective naivity.
The last days of the seige coincided with local council elections in which pro-democracy candidates won a landslide 90% of the seats. The voice of the people was thereby legitimated via conventional political means, largely venting the pressure for more protests.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-renditions-kidnapping/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hongkong-billionaire-idUSKBN15Q09Q
Having woefully misjudged the public sentiment on extradition, HK's Legislative Council attempted to appease public outcry by allowing street marches on the issue.
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| June 2019: subway stations fill to capacity as people converge along marching routes |
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| Umbrellas: cheap and effective for frustrating Big Brother's video surveillance |
The marches quickly gained momentum, providing a platform for grievances to mushroom from mere extradition to political reform generally. The public was already demanding greater autonomy from China and even sovereignty for HK before LegCo realised that appeasement was fueling the debate not quenching it. Further marches were then banned. Predictably the next wave was one of unsanctioned protests; protesting the right to march. Early efforts to disperse crowds with blue-dyed water cannon were quickly superseded by efforts to contain and capture protesters who were now being labeled as 'rioters'.
Weekend evenings became regular fixtures of cat-and-mouse through Hong Kong's narrow streets and back alleys as stiffly regimented police squads were effortlessly wrong-footed by very nimble and highly coordinated teenage tacticians. Weeks went by in which bewildered tourists emerged from the city's smartest boutiques, aghast at the sight of green-clad police bearing shields and batons chasing black-clad, Ninjas-in-Nikes through the city's most fashionable shopping districts.
Naturally many protesters had family members serving in the police force; a juxtaposition which the media fully relished, running interviews with emancipated wives and daughters who joined unsanctioned protests while their dullard husbands and fathers march in the riot control squads.
Early marches were largely well behaved and good natured, although street art was already characterising the police as dumb lackeys, being wielded as a blunt instrument of the HK govt. Even after the LegCo suspended the extradition bill, the freedom (or not) to march and demand its total withdrawal became a fierce battle of wills between Hong Kong's deeply unhappy residents and the authority of the Legislative Council. This was a game in which foreigners largely sat on the sidelines; expats continued to overflow from the bars and clubs onto the streets each evening at happy hour, while domestic helpers continued to fill the parks and malls on Sundays. Meanwhile tourists were always shown polite consideration; even the most determined protesters were never too busy to advise disorientated tourists on how to avoid the tear gas and baton charges advancing around the around the next corner, or indeed which quiet back alleys would lead them safely to the to-die-for sale at Coach.
Perhaps the most effective demonstrations during this time were the peaceful sit-ins at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport in Aug 2019. These forced the cancellation of all departures for several days over consecutive weeks, disrupting business travel, air freight and tourism. Within days, flight and hotel reservations were being cancelled en-masse as businesses rediscovered what that little blue 'Skype' icon in their Windows Start menu was all about.
As days stretched into weeks the long-familiar queues of mainlanders waiting patiently under parasols and straw boaters in the fierce summer sun to browse the boutiques of Hermes, Burberry and Dior slowly evaporated. Meanwhile the local customers of beach restaurants were being told that half the menu items were unavailable due to 'delivery problems'.
The airport occupation showed conclusively that HK's success as an aviation hub may also be its Achilles' heel and that the protesters understood HK's vulnerabilities better than the authorities did. Furthermore, the police had not anticipated the tactics of the protesters or managed to monitor their communications to any significant advantage. As an embarrassing afterthought the authorities quickly secured the airport from further crippling sit-ins to maintain continuity of business and tourism. It was finally clear that the police would need to infiltrate the protester's organisation to keep up with the game.
The third wave of public unrest brought with it a sharp escalation from noisy protest to premeditated violence and vandalism. Protests morphed into street riots, fighting became progressively more dangerous, police stations came under attack.
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Blue stained shoes;
revealing this subway commuter got too close to a police water-cannon during the weekend
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Kowloon's Nathan Road:
posh shoppers going about their business during the calm before the storm. Police make afternoon patrols in full riot gear as a visual deterrent
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Early marches were largely well behaved and good natured, although street art was already characterising the police as dumb lackeys, being wielded as a blunt instrument of the HK govt. Even after the LegCo suspended the extradition bill, the freedom (or not) to march and demand its total withdrawal became a fierce battle of wills between Hong Kong's deeply unhappy residents and the authority of the Legislative Council. This was a game in which foreigners largely sat on the sidelines; expats continued to overflow from the bars and clubs onto the streets each evening at happy hour, while domestic helpers continued to fill the parks and malls on Sundays. Meanwhile tourists were always shown polite consideration; even the most determined protesters were never too busy to advise disorientated tourists on how to avoid the tear gas and baton charges advancing around the around the next corner, or indeed which quiet back alleys would lead them safely to the to-die-for sale at Coach.
Perhaps the most effective demonstrations during this time were the peaceful sit-ins at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport in Aug 2019. These forced the cancellation of all departures for several days over consecutive weeks, disrupting business travel, air freight and tourism. Within days, flight and hotel reservations were being cancelled en-masse as businesses rediscovered what that little blue 'Skype' icon in their Windows Start menu was all about.
As days stretched into weeks the long-familiar queues of mainlanders waiting patiently under parasols and straw boaters in the fierce summer sun to browse the boutiques of Hermes, Burberry and Dior slowly evaporated. Meanwhile the local customers of beach restaurants were being told that half the menu items were unavailable due to 'delivery problems'.
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| Familiar sight; long queues of mainlanders waiting to enter HK's most fashionable boutiques |
The airport occupation showed conclusively that HK's success as an aviation hub may also be its Achilles' heel and that the protesters understood HK's vulnerabilities better than the authorities did. Furthermore, the police had not anticipated the tactics of the protesters or managed to monitor their communications to any significant advantage. As an embarrassing afterthought the authorities quickly secured the airport from further crippling sit-ins to maintain continuity of business and tourism. It was finally clear that the police would need to infiltrate the protester's organisation to keep up with the game.
The third wave of public unrest brought with it a sharp escalation from noisy protest to premeditated violence and vandalism. Protests morphed into street riots, fighting became progressively more dangerous, police stations came under attack.
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| August 2019: barricades around Western Police Station, Des Voix Road |
The police's tear gas and rubber bullets were answered by protesters with paving blocks, petrol bombs and blazing barricades hastily cobbled together from street railings and materials pilfered from local construction sites.
From the outset, marches and protests included token amounts of opportunist vandalism. These were typically half-baked attempts at graffiti on the doors of Chinese banks or damage to the windows of Chinese fast food franchises; they were usually the parting shots of young activists wanting to leave their mark on the battlefield before withdrawing for the evening. However as protesting gave way to rioting it became clear that new agitants had joined the fray with different agendas - and with this started a slow fragmentation of public opinion.
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Street railings and construction materials removed to make impromptu street barricades.
Paving blocks dug up ready for confrontation
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September 2019: charred roads and discarded barricades after
police actions sweep rioters from the main streets into the back-alleys
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| Old public spaces with new graffiti |
As weeks stretched into months, protesting became characterised by street fighting, out-and-out vandalism and extreme retaliation against dissent. Ticket machines, turnstiles and the glass facades of subway stations were inexplicably destroyed. Some of the very few who took issue with the perpetrators found themselves unprepared for the consequences.
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11 Nov 2019; 57 yr old Lee Chi-Cheung pays a high price for remonstrating with
radical protesters who vandalised the city's subway station
and for offering the contentious view that Hongkongers are Chinese.
|
https://hongkongfp.com/2019/11/11/hong-kong-police-say-man-set-alight-arguing-protesters/
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3037243/hong-kong-father-two-burned-alive-after-chasing
Higher stakes required bolder tactics and caution was an early casualty. Attempts were made to capture firearms from police officers, leading to the first warning shots fired with live ammunition. Petrol bombs thrown at police vehicles rolled under family vehicles stuck in the traffic alongside.
People who had previously attended the marches or morally supported friends and family protesting the right to march started to concede that aimless destruction of public transport served no political purpose and that no good result could come of snatching a holstered weapon from a policeman. People began to ask if the protest movement had lost sight of its objectives.
To the credit of the police, great restraint was instructed and effectively maintained in the face of quite overwhelming pressure. There can be few countries in the world where a protester running to throw a burning petrol bomb over police lines would not be met with lethal force; yet it happened in Hong Kong on an almost daily basis. Instead large numbers of rubber bullets and bean bag rounds were used, a small number of which caused serious injuries, including an Indonesian reporter blinded permanently in one eye.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/blinded-indonesian-journalist-seeks-answers-hong-kong-police-191206033800684.html
With most people's calendars blocked out for Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year from the end of December 2019 to the end of January 2020, Hong Kongers' anticipation of a final, grand act of defiance to complete 2019 became palpable from early November. Speculation, expectation and tension escalated through every media platform, coffee shop and drinking den. Protesters selected the buildings of Hong Kong Polytechnic University on 17th November to make their last stand of the year.
An early attempt by police failed to take control of the situation as they tried to drive an armored car onto the campus. This was successfully repulsed with petrol bombs, prompting police to secure all building exits, initiating a siege. The now-familiar volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets were answered with petrol bombs and even improvised bows and arrows to the point where hospitals were overwhelmed with patients. After 3 days and nights of inconclusive fighting and damage to university property, a 10 day waiting game followed. Exhausted, hungry and unwashed, small groups of protesters made sporadic escape attempts. However most were overpowered and arrested with a few daring exceptions such as those repelling with zipwires from bridges or wading through sewer systems.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3039838/war-zone-prison-voices-polytechnic-university-siege-site
https://hongkongfp.com/2019/12/12/battle-scarred-lasting-impact-polyu-campus-siege-hong-kongs-protest-movement/
https://hongkongfp.com/2020/05/15/hong-kong-police-charge-14-with-rioting-over-university-campus-siege-1-wanted/
Observers estimate approx 1,300 people may have been caught up in some or all of the 10 day siege with 300 of these being minors and some even under 16. As the last remnants gave themselves up, two things became clear for the first time; the substantial support given to the protesters and their collective naivity.
The highly visible front line activists seen throwing petrol bombs and fighting police had been supported by large numbers of reserve volunteers giving medical aid, cooking food, procuring materials, making weapons, running communications, planning escapes, coordinating escape vehicles, etc. They saw these non-conflict roles as excusable, justifiable and definitely not prosecutable. When the siege fell and everyone was taken into custody, surprised parents wept on their knees begging police to "... just let their children come home...". The participants seem to have shared a collective, starrey-eyed delusion that their actions would have no consequences. This confirmed what many outsiders had guessed from the beginning; that the protesters had little understanding of the world, how it works and their own accountability in it.
The last days of the seige coincided with local council elections in which pro-democracy candidates won a landslide 90% of the seats. The voice of the people was thereby legitimated via conventional political means, largely venting the pressure for more protests.
The siege of HKUP was widely reported as a long-awaited, brooding storm finally breaking over the city. However some observers see it as perhaps just the first of several waves to break across the bow, signalling something altogether more sinister coming over the horizon.
