With the defeat last week of the Beijing-backed political reform plan they slammed as a “fake democracy,” Hong Kong’s young protesters are questioning how to take their fight forward as the gulf between them and mainland China widens.
The proposal would have allowed residents to vote for Hong Kong’s chief executive for the first time — currently the leader is chosen by a pro-Beijing election committee.
However, the plan stuck to a ruling by Beijing that all candidates would be vetted, a decision that sparked mass student-led protests at the end of last year.
Ultimately, the reform bill was voted down 28 to eight by Hong Kong lawmakers on Thursday.
However, while pro-democracy campaigners outside the legislature cheered at the result, young protesters are increasingly forging their own path.
HONG KONGERS
In the wake of last year’s street rallies, they say they identify less as Chinese and have little faith that trying to collaborate with Beijing will lead to the freedom they seek.
“When it comes to the discussion of democracy, voting rights, the right to be nominated, it is a kind of civil right in society,” Hong Kong University Students’ Union president Billy Fong (馮敬恩) said.
“This right only belongs to those citizens in Hong Kong, not people living north of the Shenzhen River,” Fong said, referring to the waterway that divides Hong Kong from the mainland.
Under Fong’s leadership, the union broke away from Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil this year.
Instead, it held its own smaller event, saying it no longer agreed with the organizers’ strategy to push for democratization in China as a way to win freedoms for Hong Kong.
“Hong Kongers will distance themselves from China. We don’t share a consensus,” student Jamie Wong, 18, said. “We need to mobilize more people to confront the authorities.”
Student Leslie Mak, 19, said she believed “there was still hope” for democracy, but felt an identity shift after the mass rallies.
“My feeling about being Chinese is blurring. I feel strongly about being a Hong Konger,” Mak told reporters.
Mak agrees with a new call by younger generations to amend Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which they feel restricts democratic development.
GROWING RESENTMENT
Students at the main Tiananmen vigil in the territory’s Victoria Park this year burned copies of the Basic Law onstage.
There is also increasingly visible resentment toward China outside the political arena, from protests against traders in border towns to the booing of the Chinese national anthem when it was played to represent Hong Kong at a recent World Cup qualifying soccer match.
Fans at the match held up towels which read “Fight for Hong Kong.”
That incident followed heavy criticism of a poster by the Chinese soccer association that warned against the “black, white and yellow” of Hong Kong’s multiethnic team.
“This alienation from the motherland and focus on core Hong Kong values will continue and will win more supporters,” Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Willy Lam (林和立) said.
“Now most young people realize they may not see a democratic China within their lifetime, so they want to focus on Hong Kong,” Lam said.
The mainstream democracy campaign risks losing the support of youngsters entirely after achieving no concessions from Beijing, analyst Ma Ngok (馬嶽) added.
“There will be some groups, especially younger groups, who think that they need to be more radical, more confrontational. Mainstream political parties will find it difficult to mobilize young people for the next [district and parliamentary] elections,” Ma said. “Most of the older generation still see themselves as Chinese, but the young say ‘we are Hong Kongese.’”
However, while they are keen to differentiate themselves, Ma said there is little genuine desire among the territory’s young to break away from Beijing.
“They feel they were promised harmony ... but are seeing more control. It’s like a very stringent father,” Ma said. “They don’t think: ‘We are going to form an independent country, or an independent state.’”
“They just want to be left alone,” he said. “To put it very simply, they just want to be free.”
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number
Australian police yesterday said a 40-year-old itinerant with mental illness was behind a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage that killed six people, including a new mum whose nine-month-old baby is still in hospital with serious wounds. New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said the assailant — who was shot and killed by a senior police officer at the scene on Saturday — was Queensland man Joel Cauchi. Five women and one male security guard were killed in the attack as Cauchi roved through a packed shopping center in the city’s Bondi Junction neighborhood with a large knife. Twelve more people