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.
