Hong Kong protests

I started my day with a ride on the famous Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor.  I am staying on the Kowloon side so I went to Hong Kong Island to ride the last double decker trolley in the world.  Central Hong Kong is primarily a business center, so I expected it to be quiet on a Sunday, but it was packed with people.  On every sidewalk and overhead walkway, groups of people, almost all women, were sitting.  They were eating, putting makeup on each other, playing cards.  I really could not figure out why there were there.

Finally I saw a lot of people in a plaza.  Someone was talking on a loudspeaker and there were signs hanging on the fence.

I'm still not sure, but I know that Hong Kong has a huge income disparity and affordable housing crisis.  The Filipino Migrant Workers Union sign leads me to believe that this is another Hong Kong protest that we don't read about - migrant workers wanting humane living conditions.

Another of the weekly big protests was planned for Sunday afternoon and one enterprising tour company ran a Protest Tour.  According to their website:

The Hong Kong extradition bill protest has undoubtedly attracted a lot of attention from around the world. However, retracting the bill is only a Red Herring and now the focus is more on the Five Demands.

Why is that and what are the five demands? And what’s the reason why we had this problem to begin with? Let’s answer all these questions by going near the protest! We will select the date/time where it will most likely be a peaceful protest so we can watch it from a safe distance. You will have the chance to interact with people in the scene and find out the answers yourselves!

In this tour, we will be OBSERVING the earlier part of the protest which is most likely to be rational and peaceful. Please note that you are responsible for your own safety when you join this tour.

The guide was fifteen minutes late and I thought I was going to have to follow the protest without the answer to all those questions, but he finally got there.  The Metro and Star Ferry had been packed.  While waiting for him, I saw hundreds of people arriving every minute, wearing black clothes and face masks.  I tried and I did wear black pants, but my darkest clean shirt was royal blue so I didn't quite blend in.

After the guide explained the reasons for the protest ... I am more confused than ever.  It is very different than what we read in the newspaper and does not fully make sense to me.  I thought the proposed law that started the protests was to allow extradition to China.  According to the guide, however, the incident that precipitated the proposed law was when a Hong Kong couple went to Taiwan.  The man killed the woman in Taiwan and returned to Hong Kong.  Taiwan (not People's Republic of China) wanted the man extradited back to Taiwan, but Hong Kong had no extradition treaty with Taiwan.  So the proposed law was to allow extradition to countries where there was no existing extradition agreement.  Kind of sounds reasonable to me that this man should be extradited to Taiwan.  But here is where it gets fuzzy.  First, Hong Kong could not make an agreement with Taiwan because China does not recognize Taiwan as a separate country.  And second, someone (who?) figured out that China could use the new law to extradite Hong Kong residents, and no one likes the Chinese judicial system.

It seems rather unbelievable to me that the extradition of a murderer to Taiwan could precipitate a crisis between Hong Kong and China.  I kept asking, and the guide explained it to me five times, but I still feel like I am missing something.  The key, however, is that the extradition law no longer matters.  Hong Kong has now withdrawn the proposed law, but it is too late.  Now the people are upset that the government of Hong Kong ignored the peaceful demonstrations of one million and then two million (out of seven million) Hong Kong natives.  Now the issue has morphed into a demand for universal voting.  As it turns out, the leader of Hong Kong is selected by 1,200 electors who are themselves elected by about 100,000.  And with the huge income disparity in Hong Kong, the few with the power to vote are either very rich or pro-China.  As explained to me by the guide and a few natives in my group, the vast majority of the protesters do not want or expect independence or democracy.  They just want the ability to vote and they want to feel that their government is listening to them.  Concept.

That was all the "touring" and "guiding" that we got.  Then we joined the protest which was a very peaceful walk from the southern tip of Kowloon up the main street for two or three miles.  The protest was "illegal" because the government had denied the request for permission to march.  Also, one of the leaders of the protest movement had been attacked a few days ago with a hammer by unknown assailants and was still in the hospital.  The guide told us to tuck in our shirts because police had been joining the marchers with their weapons under their untucked shirts.  Tucking in your shirt showed you were a protester.  When we got past the endpoint of the planned march, the guide told us the police could intervene and it was time to leave.  He would not take any money for the "tour."

I found a place to sit and read and watched as people kept marching on for at least another hour or two.  Periodically someone would start shouting or running, but most people were just strolling.  It became increasingly clear to me, however, that certain protesters were looking for a fight.  Dressed all in black with full masks, they started carrying sticks and were breaking up sidewalks to get pieces of rock.  They also were carrying gas masks.

After a while, one of them came over to me where I was sitting and said, Madam, you should leave; the police are coming.  I got up to see what was going on and the protesters were throwing the sticks and rocks and anything else they could find into the streets to create barricades.

Sure enough, the police showed up in tank like vehicles and drove right through the "barricades."  I saw smoke and thought it was tear gas, but it was protesters burning something in the streets.  The police used fire hoses with blue coloring on the protesters.  Apparently they use the blue color to identify them later.

As the police were marching up the street, they unfurled a sign that said:  Warning tear smoke.  Everyone who was not wearing a gas mask (including me) decided that this would be a good time to leave.

The Metro stations in the area were closed, so my food tour that night was cancelled.  Most of the shops and restaurants were shuttered anyway, including the ubiquitous 7-11s on every block.  In Hong Kong, the 7-11s are owned by one of the two biggest local corporations.  Fortunately, the Circle-Ks were still open and selling Coke Zero.

With the Metro closed, I had to walk back to my hotel.  At 8 at night, there were still protesters and police everywhere.  (The protest had started at 1:30.)  I have to say, however, that these were the nicest protesters.  Besides telling me politely to leave (and calling me Madam) they were cleaning sidewalks from the blue water and directing traffic around the barricades.

So I have very mixed feelings.  I read the New York Times article on the protest when I got back to my hotel and I'm not sure we were at the same protest.  Actually, I was at two different protests.  The first was a very peaceful march by hundreds of thousands (a million again?)  Hong Kong residents.  My guide and the two natives in my group were representative, as were the throngs of people, young and old, who strolled up the street.  The New York Times barely mentioned this protest.

Rather, the Times article emphasized the barricades and tear gas and the fatalism of the protesters who were not sure they would come back alive and unharmed.  The article also said that the protest has no leaders.  I would disagree.  This was too well organized.  The protesters knew where and when to move beyond a peaceful walk.  Helping clean streets and directing traffic?  That was spontaneous?  And to the extent that things did get somewhat violent at the end, I think that was the intent of the protesters, not the police.  It seemed to me that the police were trying hard not to get into a fight.

It is so easy to read the paper in the United States and say, I stand with Hong Kong.  I'm not sure what that means.