Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong

Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong

I know as a lot of you read this blog, over on the other side of the world. In the US, in Canada, in Australia and Japan. I write, I seem like just like you. A grrl in my late 20s writing about the same stuff that maybe you can relate, some stuff that you find interesting. Doesn’t seem like your life and mine is that different, not really. I get picked up by ucky guys, Ucky guys try to pick me up. I do quizzes. It seems much like what you’re doing.

All that is true. Except one thing. I don’t live in a democracy. I don’t have the vote. I can’t pick my leaders and they aren’t answerable to me in any way. As the US elections is coming up, I see all the political debates on your blogs, and I remember the excitement of being in the US when the 1992 elections was happening, and everyone in my life was backing Clinton, practically in love with him. Wanting Bush out, wanting the Republicans to go away. And when it happened, when the people spoke he was gone and there was change of office.

I sat with my grandmother watching TV and she said, “Look at these people. They just shake hands and then they move. No bloodshed, no political coup. That is something about America, you know. They don’t have to kill each other to gain power. I have never seen that in my life time in China, and I won’t.”

She didn’t. She passed away last year. She never in her lifetime saw a change of government in China without bloodshed, without a war.

And the last time people took to the street in mainland China, in the motherland and asked for political change, in 1989, they rolled in with tanks and killed the students.

I saw a political change happen in Hong Kong, an ex-colony. There was no blood shed, but it had nothing to do with me. The Brits and the Central Government sat around some big tables and discussed the end of the colonial contract and decided among themselves what to do with this city of 6 million people. Our fate was in their hands and no one asked us what we would like to do.

No referendum. Not even consultation. The two countries sat around, talked about us in terms of power in secrecy as we waited. Told us when it was decided.

What a whole load of shit.

And we sat around allowing this to happen because we don’t want any bloodshed. Because it’s not in the nature of this city to want to fight violently and it is the only way in order for us to be heard.

I don’t think violence is the way to anything, but I can respect on some level those people who blow themselves up because they know it’s the only way anyone will notice. Look at us. We did nothing, we did nothing for so long. And it’s not because we didn’t want it.

92% of the people who protested during the Tiananmen Square Crackdown believed we should have had democracy. The estimated numbers of people who were on the streets that day was one million.

One Sixth of our population wanted to rule ourselves and no one took notice. We hardly spoke.

Not until last year. Not until we were threatened with taking our free speech away. Not until our government was telling us they were going to put people like me in jail if we spoke out against the communist government and made us understand how little power we had and how our lives were really in other’s hands

It was really the last straw and half a million people (there were so so many more, they just didn’t count properly) walked out on the streets and said, “Enough” and we together stood by our rights and the government backed down for a little while. If this was California or Oregon or about a dozen states in the US that has recall legislation our government will be out in no time, when the approval rate is at the low 30s. But we do not have that luxury.

So in the last six months we have started in earnest to fight for our rights. And every day if you read the papers you will know there are a lot of people out there who don’t even believe in their rights. If you read the letters section of the SCMP or the China Daily, you will know how many people are so trained, so brainwashed into believing that someone out there will have the best intentions, are better educated, are more qualified to rule us. I find it a shame, we have been oppressed so long that people have internalized those rules.

I just put up all of the old entries of Glutter onto this server, and I remembered that’s how it’s started. Me writing daily about the events of a changing Hong Kong, and what was happening with article 23.

And I think, how all these people in the world who sees us in movies, who listens to our stars, who maybe read my daily musings don’t really remember that we don’t have proper rights, we don’t have the vote and that our government is practically handed to us, with a few elected seats here and there. And worse if the anti-free speech law of Article 23 passes, which everyone has already forgotten about because it’s not in the news, I can be put in jail doing Glutter, doing what a lot of you do because it’s fun.

It’s fun for me too but that knowledge looms at times, when I want to rant against China, when I want to say I support a recognized nation state of Taiwan, and I don’t believe in undemocratically elected governments.

People who live 100 miles from me over the border is already in jail for signing petitions and doing the same thing, without a proper trial, and will never have one.

So as I write all the cool things down that has nothing to do with that, I still live in that space, it’s still real. I guess part of this site should spend time to ask for support of this city’s quest to become a democracy.

I am awaiting a democratic Hong Kong as we all should be.

Yan

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