Mon, Feb 10, 2020 page4

• Virus fueling HK movement: advocates

  • Bloomberg
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  Prominent advocate Ventus Lau (劉穎匡) stood outside a restaurant last week, handing out surgical masks and asking recipients to shout pro-democracy slogans — including the popular rallying cry: “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!”

  For Lau, who has organized some of the biggest anti-government protests since they began in June last year, the demonstrations are on hold as fear of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak in China keeps the territory’s 7.4 million people avoiding large crowds.

  However, he said frustration over the government’s handling of the public health crisis would fuel even more support for the protest movement after the virus scare subsides.

  

  A woman walks past empty shelves at a supermarket in Hong Kong on Friday.

  Photo: AP

  “It’s hard to separate the protests and the epidemic — they are in the same vein,” said Lau, who like other protest organizers sees the disease as a new front in the broader struggle for more democracy. “The battle against the virus has helped us see the government’s incompetence and the failures of our system.”

  Hong Kong’s protests erupted in opposition to a since-scrapped bill allowing extraditions to mainland China.

  Even before 2019-nCoV cases began emerging in the past few weeks, the territory’s economy fell into recession after months of violent clashes between riot police and protesters.

  The frequency of larger-scale protests began subsiding after a landslide win for pro-democracy forces in November last year’s district council elections, followed by the Lunar New Year holidays and now the virus scare.

  There have only been two major rallies — in early December and on New Year’s Day — in the past two months, compared with regular protests at the height of the movement.

  Isolated protests took place away from the territory’s center late on Saturday night, where wooden boards, bicycles and other objects were used to block roads in the vicinity of Sheung Tak Estate, Tseung Kwan O.

  Bricks were thrown at police officers, the Hong Kong government said, prompting the use of tear gas and pepper spray to disperse crowds.

  Police said 60 people were arrested.

  The broader pause has prompted protesters to reassess their tactics to meet their key demands, including an independent inquiry into police abuses and meaningful elections.

  That has been on display in the past few weeks with the rise of pro-democracy unions, including one by medical workers calling for the territory to seal off the mainland border, as well as organizing ahead of September elections for the Hong Kong Legislative Council.

  Many in the protest movement are also registering voters for the territory’s so-called “functional constituencies,” seats in the legislature allotted to industry groups, according to veteran advocate and former professor Joseph Cheng (鄭宇碩).

  “This is going to be a very important aspect of the movement — you can’t organize large-scale protests activities because people obviously have to stay home” amid the outbreak, Cheng said.

  However, he said that the new limitations it imposed would not stop the movement.

  “The resentment certainly has been building and spreading,” he said. “People are trying to find ways to express anger against the government, despite the virus.”

  The outbreak — and reports that it was covered up by Chinese Communist Party officials — has struck a deep chord with many in Hong Kong, where the protests were driven by a deep distrust of China.

  The territory also has vivid memories of Beijing’s cover-up of 2003’s outbreak of SARS, which killed almost 300 people in Hong Kong and crippled its economy.

  Hong Kong’s government has come under fire for a shortage of surgical masks, choosing quarantine sites close to residential areas and a failure to quickly and fully shut its border with the mainland.

  Residents have struggled to buy key staples, from rice to toilet paper, due to panic buying that retailers and the government have said is unwarranted.

  “Rumors are like viruses,” Hong Kong Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung (張建宗) wrote in his weekly blog yesterday, urging people to ignore malicious commentary that could promote confusion and panic.

  “Ridiculous” prices for masks should be curbed by the government, according to Jeffrey Lam (林健鋒), a member of Hong Kong’s advisory Executive Council, Radio Television Hong Kong reported.

  “Hong Kong people cannot afford HK$2,000 [US$257] a box,” he said.

  “The government has mishandled the virus,” said Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), one of Hong Kong’s most well-known democracy campaigners. “In the short term, it will reduce the number of protests. But over the long term it will just encourage more moderate, maybe even pro-Beijing people, to come out and criticize the government over things such as the shortage of surgical masks.”

  Residents in areas that have quarantine centers or where they are planned have held demonstrations in the past couple of weeks.

  A rally late last month in the New Territories district of Fanling turned violent as demonstrators protested against a proposal to use a nearby estate as an emergency medical facility.

  Last week, riot police were deployed in the rural fishing village of Sai Kung to watch over a gathering of a couple of dozen local residents objecting to quarantine centers in its country park areas.

  With tourism down and the retail sector hurting as people stay home and avoid shops and malls, there is a strong likelihood of more layoffs and economic pain.

  That could focus more anger against increasingly unpopular Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s (林鄭月娥) administration, said Wayne Chan (陳家駒), a 29-year-old graphic designer, frontline protester and convener of the Hong Kong Independence Union.

  “In the coming future, there will only be more people losing their basic way of life and the government will become their punching bag,” he said, adding that “the risk of protesting has gone up” at a time when there is a deadly outbreak.

  At the end of the day, the movement is about Hong Kongers’ ability to protect themselves, said Eric Lai (黎恩灝), vice convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized some of the territory’s largest demonstrations.

  “The slogan we have now among the community is ‘Recover Hong Kong, resist the virus of our times,’” he said.

  The disease prevention movement is part of a larger one “using civil society as a platform to keep people from the coronavirus. Whether it’s opposing the anti-extradition bill, resisting police brutality, it’s all about protecting ourselves,” he added.
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