Joshua Wong heads home after US visit
HONG KONG: Prominent Hong Kong protesters were flying home from Washington on Saturday night buoyed by international support and determined to press on with their struggle well beyond two looming anniversaries.
In an interview, Joshua Wong, 22, and pop star Denise Ho, 42, downplayed the personal toll of standing up to authoritarian China and its pro-Beijing leadership in the global financial hub.
They have become the faces of a protest movement which is leaderless and whose activists take to the streets masked, partly to protect themselves from reprisals in their push for universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into alleged police abuses.
Mr Wong and Ho are returning to Hong Kong after raising awareness in the United States, Germany, Taiwan and Australia about the pro-democracy protests that have continued for more than three months despite escalating rhetoric from Beijing.
Next Saturday is the fifth anniversary of the 79-day Umbrella Movement, which Mr Wong helped spearhead after Beijing rejected a call for universal voting rights in the former British colony.
Ho said she worries about what might happen around that date because police have been rejecting requests for marches even though “it is in our rights to peacefully assemble”.
By not allowing the rallies, authorities are violating the Basic Law that underpins the city’s semi-autonomous status.
“I do think this is a situation that might go on for quite a bit of time, and one of the ways to stop it is probably really to get the international communities to come together to voice their concerns over this issue,” Ho, short-haired and wearing a military-style jacket and heavy boots said in an interview.
Three days after the Umbrella Movement commemoration will be the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, but Ho said she does not think China’s communist rulers would want any clashes on that day. Nor would they deploy People’s Liberation Army troops, she said.
“But then you have to understand that the Chinese police are already here, they are already infiltrating the Hong Kong police force,” said Ho, whose music has been banned in mainland China for her activism.
“We do expect there will be a huge number of people who would be going on the streets” to protest on Oct 1, she said.
The Hong Kong demonstrations, which drew millions, began against a now-scrapped plan to allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland. They grew into a wider campaign for democracy, fuelled by animosity towards the police, with some turning to violence.
Under the terms of the 1997 deal, the city has rights and liberties that do not exist on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and freedom of speech, but demonstrators say freedoms are being eroded by Beijing.