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Paul Luciw has lived in Hong Kong since 1991. He founded the AsiaXPAT site in 1999, and has written thousands of articles about Hong Kong and Asia powering the expat Must Reads section. Whatever the issue, if Hong Kong is involved, he’s got an opinion and usually an answer.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over two years since I last stepped on soil outside of New Zealand. I’ve been based in Queenstown for over four years, previously living in Motueka for three years, with frequent stretches of 3 months or more spent in Hong Kong working out of our head office.
In September of 2019, just as what had started as a 2 million person peaceful protest against China’s attempt to violate the Basic Law descended into utter chaos and violence across virtually every district of the city, I flew into Hong Kong to cover the story for our website. I would spend over 8 weeks embedded with the black-shirted students following and conversing with them as they battled the police on an almost daily basis.
It takes a brave person – or perhaps a desperate one – to take on a battalion of riot police armed with all the essentials of snuffing out rebellion. Pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, heavy truncheons – the Hong Kong police unleashed it all on these kids.
But as you may be aware, their world came crashing down around them in a crescendo of tear gas and pepper spray at their Alamo – the Hong Kong Polytechnic – where they abandoned their ‘Be Water’ strategy and made a last cataclysmic stand.
Some say that was a tactical mistake on the part of the students. And it was, but the battle was lost when the very first tear gas round was launched into the peaceful protests months earlier, tearing open the hornet’s nest.
The HK government had learned a lesson failing to act early on during the Umbrella Revolution in 2014 which resulted in the streets of the CBD being clogged with thousands of protesters for months. This time they were not going to make the same mistake and without a doubt the edict was issued to the police – end this like we ultimately ended the previous protests by inciting the protestors, wait for them to turn to violence then show them the steel hand.
All hell broke loose as the protesters responded spitting venom on a level that I doubt the CCP expected. But, as the students soon discovered, if you get the upper hand, there are always more troopers that can be disgorged from the riot buses. And if you win you lose, because they will reach for their revolvers if they believe their lives are in danger, and they are not loaded with rubber bullets as a couple of protesters discovered.
The HK government absorbed many body blows but ultimately they got their knockout punch. No longer messing about, they shredded the entire Basic Law, imprisoned dozens of protesters for long stretches, and introduced a fancy new Security Law which transformed Hong Kong into a police state.
Effectively all protests were declared illegal. All dissent is now stifled.
Hong Kong is a city of 7 million people living in extreme fear. Multiple journalists have been imprisoned for using the pen to support the protest movement; the most popular newspaper in Hong Kong, the pro-democracy Apple Daily had its accounts frozen and the owner sent to the gulag, and the paper no longer exists.
Hong Kong as we knew it, is effectively over.
What started out as a peaceful attempt by the people of Hong Kong to oppose a totalitarian regime, is in tatters. Maybe it was always destined to end this way and perhaps there was no other choice but to rip up the sidewalks and fling bricks at the tyrant because the tyrant would never respond to peaceful overtures, even when the vast majority of the population opposed their tyranny.
The message we need to take from Hong Kong is that even with the vast majority behind them, (some 70% of Hong Kong residents supported the protests), the protesters failed. Those of us opposing the mandates and the apartheid system and the entire apparatus that is imposing these unfair, illogical policies on the people of New Zealand, are in the minority.
If we turn to violence not only will the government’s gladiators emerge from the tunnel by the thousands, our neighbours and in many instances our family members, will cheer them on demanding they crush ‘the terrorists’. That is an unwinnable war.
So what can we do to shift the mountain? We keep chipping away at the base, we continue with the peaceful protests, we continue with trying to inform the masses and hope that they will come to their senses and see that these vaccines are worse than useless. We need them to say ‘enough!’
One of the most poignant moments in Hong Kong happened during one of the frequent lunch time protests that inevitably descended into full-on riots. Thousands of students had gathered for yet another ’60 minutes’ of hate for the government and being the lunch break hundreds of office workers were gathered on the walkways above the CBD watching and waiting for mayhem.
A young women implored the bankers and lawyers and other professionals, most of whom no doubt sided with the students, to come down from their safe perches and join them. As she put it, through tears, “If you would come down here and join us we would not have to suffer like this.”
I am certain they could hear her because the crowd was silent and listening as she repeatedly urged them to get off the fence and support them. Not a single person came down. Not one.
The Truckers in Canada came down, but they are on the ropes and they need all of Canada to come down now.
If enough people come down from the walkways and actively support the protests in New Zealand, we can win the day. What we need are numbers to come forward and say we do not accept these policies. We will not comply.
The bully cannot be bullied with violence, because he is the master of violence. But he can be put out of business by sheer numbers. We can’t stand by watching – do whatever you can within your means to support the movement, including joining the protests in Wellington, even if it’s only for a weekend.
Do not remain silent. Do not remain invisible. When you see injustices imposed on the unvaxxed or the unmasked, pick up the phone, or write an email and let them know, we do not accept your policies. Support businesses that are reasonable and boycott those that are not.
When people who support the protests but are not taking action see they have numbers on their side, they will be more inclined to join the fight for freedom.
This is a first-hand account of what transpired in Hong Kong in 2019 – The Nightmare from Which We Never Awaken. More videos are available here.
That nightmare is now more or less permanent.
Words by Paul Luciw, edited and collated by ExPFC.
