The street riots in Hong Kong over a hawker selling fishballs on the first day of the Lunar New Year (Feb. 8), dubbed the “fishball revolution” by Hong Kong’s young, shocked many, as it defied the image of the territory as a financial center with free market capitalism and a purely economic rationale — the (false) image Beijing has striven to uphold for almost 20 years.
However, there is no reason to be surprised, especially after the “Umbrella movement” in 2014, which lasted more than two months, but achieved little, and the lack of a channel to vent pent-up frustrations.
The clash between police and vendors and their supporters reminded many Taiwanese of the 228 Incident in 1947, which released long-suppressed fury against a corrupt regime.
Associations have also been made, arguably more aptly, to the Formosa Magazine incident in December 1979, which could be seen as the culmination of a series of protests and challenges made by pro-democracy activists to the authoritarian regime in the same year and in the previous two years. The incident was soon labeled a violent riot and lambasted by the then-state-controlled media and the regime, and the “rioters” were arrested.
Among the widely varied differences between the two incidents in Taiwan, one to be noted is that in the 1979 incident, the regime, intensifying its policing and riot-suppression actions in response to growing calls for true democracy and a free society, had chosen to pre-emptively clamp down on the protesters before any “riot” really took place.
Even before the Umbrella movement, Hong Kong had witnessed various demonstrations against the Hong Kong government’s policies that are believed to have been delivered on the directive of Beijing. When the Umbrella movement, an outburst of suppressed discontent, met with little positive response from authorities, it is no surprise that more “riots” followed, probably with better equipment and strategies on both sides of the clashes.
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson last week said the unrest was “plotted mainly by a local radical separatist organization.”
By officially marking the riot “separatist-led,” there is reason to worry that the Hong Kong government, aided by Beijing, will have little trouble finding an excuse from now on to pre-empt any anti-government dissent.
“Pre-emptively clamp down on the protests and you will have the riots you want,” an author said after the 1979 incident.
However, facing intensified street protests, stepping up riot-supression efforts seems to be the only way for an undemocratic authority.
It is therefore particularly ironic that Hong Kong’s government, rejecting the call for an independent inquiry into the Mongkok violence, said in a statement released on Monday that the territory “enjoys free access to information and is a highly democratic and transparent society.”
Taiwan’s Sunflower movement in 2014, or even the “red shirts” anticorruption movement in 2006, served as a contrast. Both movements were followed in less than two years by presidential and legislative elections, and in both the ruling party suffered bitter losses.
Less than a year after the Sunflower movement, a commentator, poking fun at those annoyed by the “harmony-destroying rioters,” called on them to vote against the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) mayoral candidate in the November 2014 election “if you would hate to see more young rioters on the streets in the future.”
Free — and, in Hong Kong’s and many other cases, truly free — elections might not be a panacea, but they are nonetheless a conduit for a popular voice that wants to be heard.
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