Ticking clock drove wounded protester
HONG KONG — Born after the historic July 1 day when Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the 18-year-old protester who was shot at close range in the chest by a police officer during violent demonstrations this week and then arrested in the hospital is part of a generation for whom the clock is ticking.
In the lifetimes of young Hong Kong citizens born after 1997, the sands will run out on China’s promise _ enshrined in the territory’s constitution _ that Hong Kong’s “capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”
That looming deadline and uncertainty about what, exactly, will happen after 2047 weigh like a sword of Damocles in the minds of many people in Hong Kong.
But protesters who have flooded the streets since June are certain about what they don’t want: For Hong Kong to become like all of China’s other cities, its special freedoms snuffed out, its status lost as a freewheeling international hub for business and ideas.
Those fears, his schoolmates say, drove Tsang Chi-kin to become a protest leader in his high school, which bubbled with fury Wednesday following the teenager’s shooting during widespread and violent demonstrations that wracked Hong Kong on Tuesday, as Communist leaders in Beijing were celebrating 70 years in power.
As other pupils at the Ho Chuen Yiu Memorial College in Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan district used their lunchbreak to chant in anger, a 17-year-old student who previously joined Tsang on marches said he and others born after 1997 feel that if they don’t fight now to defend the territory’s liberties, they may never get a second chance.
“That’s why, I think, Kin is so passionate,” said the schoolmate. Like many who fear they could face repercussions for protesting, he would only give a single name, Sam. “He believes that this is the last time, the last chance for us to fight for what we have.”