Facial wear, flags and flaming gasoline: Hongkongers march for human rights - six months on
Written by Jobert Leong and Hubert Leong
On December 8th, one day before the six-month anniversary of the million-strong march against the now-withdrawn extradition bill, hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers took to the streets of Causeway Bay and surrounding areas in a repeat of what happened half a year ago, though this time for different reasons.
Despite not reaching the impressive numbers of the two marches in June, Sunday’s protest still managed to attract 800,000 people according to the Civil Human Rights Front, though police put the number at a far more conservative 183,000.
While nearly six months have passed since the first major anti-extradition bill protest on June 9th, the day this protest was held also had more significance to it than a simple commemoration: December 10th, also recognized as International Human Rights Day, was just two days after the march was held. By tying the protest to the date when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed, the convenors of the protest hoped to draw attention to what Hongkongers were fighting for, which did not deviate much from the core five demands continuously stated since late June.
This demonstration was the first large-scale march approved since July 1st, when protestors broke into the Legislative Council complex after the march had officially ended and completely vandalized it, which the government claimed needed billions of dollars to completely restore. After that incident, the only approved major event that took place was a sit-in at Victoria Park, also organized by the Civil Human Rights front, who claimed that 1.5 million people took part in the protest via people constantly coming and going from the main sitting area.
Sunday’s protest also came hot off the heels of the pan-democrats’ landslide victory in the district council elections on November 24th, where they managed to obtain a majority in all of the 18 district councils across Hong Kong with the exception of the Outlying Islands district, kicking out prominent pro-establishment district councillors in the process.
With large amounts of new blood being injected into Hong Kong’s municipal affairs body, this massive turnaround in governance came as a surprise to even the most idealistic pan-democrats, giving Hongkongers renewed hope that things could finally change after the events of the past six months. While people have speculated that this recent string of triumphs would make citizens complacent and thus less likely to protest, the turnout of Sunday’s march proved that although people were satisfied with what they had, they still wanted more.
Along the protest route from Victoria Park to Chater Garden in Central, police dressed in anti-riot gear were dotted along the route, observing the protestors from their vantage points on the bridges that linked the business district of Hong Kong Island. When people passed them by, the mood immediately shifted from enthusiastic to vengeful, as people collectively made universal obscene gestures and shouted out various curses in Cantonese at the police, a form of soft retaliation against the excessive force that police officers have been observed to use while in the line of duty on protestors, no matter whether they were peaceful or radical.
As part of the conditions for approving this march, the government forbade organizations collecting donations at the beginning of the march route. However, this did not stop various political bodies from doing so along the way, which was not explicitly forbidden. Their donation boxes stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, notable political heavyweights also stationed themselves at various points along the path, encouraging the protestors to not give up and remember what they have been through over the past six months.
Though past protests have been accompanied by scenes of Molotov cocktails being thrown and streets literally ripped apart, there were no scenes of chaos during the march itself, with the only significant damage being fires started at the entrances of the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal, only a short while after the former ruled the mask ban invoked by the government’s Emergency Regulations Ordinance was unconstitutional.
“Colors splashed across the streets on Sunday instead of flaming gasoline”
After the protest officially ended at 6pm, some protestors stayed behind and started to build barricades near Central Station, anticipating a showdown with police dressed in anti-riot gear stationed nearby, as had been the case for the majority of protests since July. Though the police had stationed armored cars and one of their water cannon trucks behind their front line, no violence erupted later that night, with even the most radical of protestors peacefully dispersing at the end.
Being a peaceful protest, colors splashed across the streets on Sunday instead of flaming gasoline, with the most numerous being the flags of various democratic nations such as the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with appearances by the colonial-era flag of Hong Kong back when it was under British rule, a symbol of people’s nostalgia for the ‘good old days’.
Perhaps the most striking addition to Sunday’s protest were the appearance of 108 fiberglass masks, designed to resemble versions of Pepe the Frog and Li-Pig (mascot of online forum LIHKG), symbols of Hongkongers’ continued struggle. These masks were worn by members of Singjai, a pro-democracy online community group convened by Simon Lau, former member of Central Policy Unit, the Hong Kong government’s think tank.
Wearing these pieces of headgear all the way from Kwun Tong to Causeway Bay, these multicolored masks garnered the attention of local and international media, who photographed Singjai members in various scenarios with these masks on, showing that people could now express their freedom through facial wear once again.