Occupy Movement spreads its wings
September
28, 2015, and the first anniversary of the Umbrella Movement protests, which
began on Sept. 28, 2014, and lasted for 79 days, was ‘not celebrated’ in Hong
Kong; “There is nothing to celebrate,” said activist Edith Chung – though my
good wish referred to her having a happy festival as this is also the
Mid-Autumn Festival, a very well celebrated event on the Chinese cultural
calendar.
What
she expressed is the general feeling among most of the activists of what also
got termed Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, which umbrellas were also displayed
at yesterday’s event where over a thousand Hongkongers gathered.
Of
these almost 200 were against the Occupy phenomenon with some of these
declaring it initiated problems experienced by the economy as Beijing withdrew favours
and cancelled business events to indicate displeasure.
Others
have suggested that, by raising tensions in Hong Kong’s relationship with
Beijing, the Umbrella Movement likely made it a tougher task to achieve greater
democracy in Hong Kong.
Michael
Davis, a constitutional law expert at Hong Kong University, pragmatically said
Beijing never had any intention to compromise, leaving protesters with nothing
to lose, saying to the press: “The protest certainly did not harm Hong Kong’s
prospects for reaching a compromise over democracy. It put pressure on Beijing
to take some reasonable path out of this tense situation. Whether they will or
not is yet to be seen.”
It
was a long shot indeed to presume anything happening on the street in Hong Kong
would alter Beijing’s plans for the ex-British colony. In its view, what is
current is democratic in the sense taken by the Communist Party, with the wide
strata of representation at the various levels when voting takes place.
Universal suffrage in the full western sense was never intended.
It
was reported in the press that at the moment of the one-minute silence, instead
of silent reflection – at 5:58pm local time -protesters booed police but that’s
not a hundred percent true according to Ms Edith Chung. “Most of us still
remained in front of the stage, remained silent and listened as the organiser
played the audio record of what happened last year at that moment. I heard the
people shouting to police, ‘you are also Hong Kong People’… ‘we do not have any
weapons, please stop throwing tear gas at us.’… I could see some people had
tears in their eyes, including myself.”
Ms
Chung felt that yesterday’s event was part of a healing process and brought
everyone back to that moment, “not to create more anger, but to draw more courage
and energy from the gathered supporters, all having similar dreams and beliefs
about Hong Kong democracy, to move on and practise our civil disobedience and
civil awareness in our daily life.”
Very
recently the outrage could be clearly seen as local people reacted to the
bizarre action of the mass transit system MTR to stop students bringing
instruments into trains. It was an action against busking which has become an
everyday sight since Occupy days. Some young people played their music near MTR
stations and when the MTR staff reproached one musician, he replied that he had
checked the land contract and this was a public area and he had the right to
play music there!
“I
can see Hong Kong young people becoming more and more brave to fight for what
is supposed to be our right,” she says, “I can see more and more HK people
sacrifice their leisure time to go out into the community to set up booths, to
spread their beliefs about democracy even when they know they may have to face
attacks from anti-democracy people.”
Occupy
could be seen as failure because Hong Kong did not get what the protesters
originally asked for: universal suffrage. However, how to measure and give
credit to the Umbrella Movement’s success in raising civil awareness among the
citizens?
Activist
legislative celebrity Dr. Chan Kin Man shared in the Mingpao newspaper his thoughts
after one year has passed, “We lost the moment, but we’ll win the future.”
Joshua
Wong who internationally became for many the face of the Umbrella Movement shared
on his Facebook page: “After one year, it is not good for us just to celebrate
our “good times” during occupy, it is the time for us to say goodbye to the
feelings of ‘helplessness’ as well as any Chinese cynicism. We should
acknowledge that we did not achieve what we asked for, we do not have our
popular vote in 2017 but we will not give up, we will think about our future
road, to commit further to Hong Kong democratic movements, move on and always
stay on the front line.”
“We
hope one year after, in 2016, we are not going to bring yellow umbrellas back
to Admiralty, but we can tell other people, like those standing behind the
front line or who keep silence, how we will take action in the following twelve
months to change the local political cycle and to expand civil awareness.”
The
theme of the gathering yesterday was, ‘Say No to Political Pressure’ as more
and more actions taken by the police, to arrest students, demonstrators or,
even academics, tells of government interference not just with student actions
but also with the freedom of academics and university independence.”
“I
am proud we have young people like this, having such broad mindedness to review
and the ability to look forward into the future when it comes to our democratic
movement,” ended Ms Chung.
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