The Forgettable Fear and A Deported Journalist You didn’t Hear About.

Awaiting the Democratic Hong Kong

After about eight hours into being in China, where you can eat in KFC drink a 7 Up, where I bought some books, and looked at photos of the bustling contemporary art scene in Beijing, I felt like I was in another part of Hong Kong. I start forgetting. I start forgetting this is the country that sentences Tibetan Monks to death for speaking their truths. I forget that somewhere here are people in jail because they asked the government for change. I forget that if I unfurled a banner that read, “DEMOCRACY IN CHINA NOW.” I would be joining those who came before me, straight away, detained without charge, without trial and sitting somewhere really unpleasant for a thought crime.

So at the ninth hour, as my friend and I ordered food and I said. “In September 2003, I met a journalist in Berkley California. I white American male and his American Chinese girlfriend. I sat down and spoke with him. He had this particular look in his eyes. A look of people who have seen something disturbing but have yet to completely deal with it.

“He told me his story. He had been working in China as a journalist since college. He speaks and reads Chinese. For a while he was reporting on labour protests and the comings and goings of what was going on in China, and one day in Early 2003 he woke up, someone knocked on his door and he was arrested. They didn’t tell his girlfriend where he was going. He was merely taken away. They questioned and interrogated his girlfriend for two days. He was in jail and a week later he was deported from China. He can never go back.

There was no reporting of it on the international press. He was one person who was taken out of the country and no one said a word. He was silenced and his silencing came with another form of silence. Unreported.”

My friend said, “There is a Hong Kong lawyer who went into Shanghai and started helping a group of residents sue a development company for reimbursements over a place they were moved out of. He didn’t know how powerful the person who he was up against was. He found himself arrested and accused of spying and giving out state secrets in the forms of development plans. His family is currently trying to get him out of the jail and back home. They are asking our legislative councilors to help. That was a few months ago, but I have heard nothing since. Do you know what’s scary? For every one person whose family goes for help. There are I don’t know how many who are in jail right now because we haven’t heard about it.”

“I only heard about that one journalist because he was at a party I was at. Otherwise he doesn’t even exist either.”

“It’s so easy to forget when we are doing so well economically.”

I start getting a little irate, “Our government is so correct in keeping us quiet. If people don’t know, they can keep doing whatever they want. If Taiwan becomes independent then others will want to follow. All that posturing is so necessary. If Hong Kong becomes self ruled, then others in China is going to ask for the same. They are right in doing this if they want to maintain the current political structure! Shit. Did I just say that too loud?”

“You’re okay. You said that its right that they do that otherwise people will want change. Under this context what you said fits right in. Ha Ha.”

“Ha Ha. Make sure I scream the rights part of the sentences loudly.”

“And whisper the other bits so no one else hears”