HK Activist Now in the UK Seeking Asylum

Chung wrote on social media that he is now in the UK

Another pro-democracy activist is seeking asylum in the UK, after managing to leave Hong Kong via Japan.

Tony Chung Hon-lam, the founder of the now defunct Studentlocalism revealed his situation in two Instagram posts. Chung, who had advocated independence, was one of the first to be convicted under the national security law for secession and money laundering, and was sentenced to 43 months in prison. He was the youngest person sentenced under the national security law.

One may remember he was arrested outside the US Consulate in Hong Kong in October 2020, allegedly seeking asylum along with two other Studentlocalism members.

He had founded Studentlocalism for independence

After Chung was released he had to regularly check-in with national security authorities about where he had been, who he had met and the nature of the conversations he had. Chung said the authorities even offered to pay him for information on others to prove that he had reformed himself.

The authorities also asked him to go to the mainland, like Agnes Chow Ting, but Chung refused; the authorities asked if it was because he was still involved in activities violating national security.

Chung also had to sign a document that barred him from disclosing his conversations with the authorities so he could not seek help from lawyers or tell anyone about his situation.

"Under enormous stress and fear, I can only endure silently," he said.

As a result, this pressure put a lot of strain on Chung's mental health. Since October he was not feeling well, and both western and Chinese doctors said it was due to his immunity weakened by the mental toll on his body.

Chung managed to persuade correctional services authorities to allow him to travel to Okinawa, Japan for a holiday to take care of himself. When he arrived in Japan, he began contacting overseas organisations to help him. From there he traveled to the UK.

"This also means I can no longer return to my home, Hong Kong, in foreseeable future," he said. "Although I had anticipated the arrival of this day in the past, I had a heavy heart when I made up my mind."

He said in the future he would devote himself for his city as a "Hongkonger in exile."

"I believe only when Hong Kong people don't give up, the seeds of freedom and democracy will sprout again one day," he said.

Agnes Chow now Studying in Canada

Chow says she is now in Toronto studying a Masters

Former activist Agnes Chow Ting, 27, has revealed she is now in Toronto, but will not be returning to Hong Kong anytime soon for the sake of her mental health.

In social media posts on Sunday, Chow said she moved to Canada's largest city to study a Masters, but was suffering mental health issues after being under pressure awaiting trial on national security charges.

She had been released from jail over two and a half years ago after serving a seven-month sentence for a protest outside the Hong Kong Police headquarters in 2019. Chow was also among a group of nine who were charged with colluding with foreign forces under the national security law.

After being released she still met strict bail conditions that included reporting to police regularly and surrendering her passport. However, she was able to get her travel document back if she agreed to take part in what she described as a propaganda tour accompanied by national security police officers and sign a letter of "repentance".

"I did no public activities, had no political involvement, no contact with my former friends, I just waited in silence," she wrote on social media. "Regular check-ins for national security, partial disenfranchisement, emotional instability and the restrictions on my life as a (former) democratic politician, combined with endless waiting, my mental condition was getting worse."

She applied to a Masters program in Toronto, was accepted, though the national security police demanded a lot of information, from the course details, timetable, to accommodation, and also that she write a "repentance letter", stating she regretted her political activism and that she would never contact people in that field again.

But then in July the national security police said she needed to go on a tour to Shenzhen, which she apprehensively did in mid-August. During the five-day trip she was accompanied by national security police officers who took her to political exhibitions and the company headquarters of Tencent. All throughout the trip pictures were taken of her, perhaps as proof of her patriotism. 

While Chinese state security officers didn't question her, Chow said she felt she was being under surveillance the whole time. After the trip she was asked to write a thank you letter to the police for arranging it.

For this she finally received her passport the day before she left Hong Kong. Chow is supposed to return during school holidays, but has now decided against it, fearing she may not be able to leave the city again or more conditions would be placed on her.

"After careful consideration, including considering the situation in Hong Kong, my own safety, my physical and mental health, I decided not to go back, and will probably never go back for the rest of my life," she wrote. "I didn't have this intention in the beginning.

"I have felt for years how precious freedom from fear is. There are still a lot of unknowns in the future, but what can be known is that I finally don't have to worry about being arrested anymore and can say what I want to do."

One can imagine the Hong Kong national security police were not pleased to find out Chow wasn't coming back and released a statement without mentioning her by name.

"The police strongly condemn these irresponsible behaviours that blatantly challenge law and order," it said. "The police appeal to the person involved to step back from the cliff and not choose to take a path of no return and bear the name of 'fugitive' for the rest of her life."

Interesting to note the department did not refute her account of being forced to go on a propaganda trip to Shenzhen and write the letters of repentance and thanks. It did confirm she was granted travel documents to travel abroad and that she had been "cooperative" with the police's reporting requirements.

Guess this means no more studying abroad for others wishing to find a way to jump bail conditions...

Crackdown on Yellow Economic Circle

The "yellow economic circle" app disappeared on Friday

On the heels of Hong Kong police announcing HK$1 million bounties for the arrest of eight pro-democracy lawmakers and activists living in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, national security police arrested five people in Hong Kong for allegedly working on an app that promoted the "yellow economic circle".

Called Mee, the app was developed during the 2019 protests as a way to support pro-democracy businesses. The app not only directed people to restaurants and shops that were "yellow", but also these places gave customers the opportunity to express themselves with a mini Lennon wall featuring colourful post-it notes, or protest-themed posters and figurines as decoration.

One of the arrested was Ivan Lam

Some landlords are sympathetic to businesses in the "yellow economic circle", and many people patronise these shops and restaurants; some people only eat and shop at these places. Some better known ones were Chickeeduck and AbouThai.

Nevertheless, it was perhaps only a matter of time until the authorities would begin to crackdown on this "yellow economic circle".

Four were arrested on Wednesday, the fifth the next day at Hong Kong International Airport. They are all former members of the defunct political party Demosisto started by Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Agnes Chow Ting, and Nathan Law Kwun-chung. The five were also behind the Mee app, which stopped operating on Friday. 

Chinese state media reported the arrested allegedly used profits from Mee to provide funding for Law living in the UK. The app made money by businesses paying to be featured on the platform, and now these businesses fear they could be future targets. However, their political leanings are open secrets, and it wasn't as if the app was not general knowledge. 

This "yellow" store sells products from Thailand 

Following news of the arrests, some shops immediately took down the Mee sticker on their store fronts to make them easily identifiable to consumers, while others did not... yet. In general they noted an uptick of inspectors from various government departments coming in to check out their businesses with many tedious warnings.

Despite the challenges, these yellow businesses intend to stay open as long as they can, as long as people are coming to support them.

Review: We Have Boots

Chan's doc on the Umbrella Movement

It's hard rewatching footage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, police indiscriminately firing tear gas canisters at protesters, roughly pushing them down on the ground, and the scenes of officers beating up commuters in Prince Edward MTR station are horrifying every time, as well as the white shirted men with sticks attacking people at the Yuen Long MTR station.

How did this all happen within a span of days, weeks and months?

But these scenes only make up a small part of director Evans Chan's documentary, We Have Boots: Hong Kong on the Edge (2020) that was shown online as part of the Global Hong Kong Studies at the University of California.

Yellow umbrellas became symbol of movement

His film actually focuses more on the 2014 Umbrella Movement, how it happened (spontaneously), thousands of people occupied parts of the city and ended without a proper resolution 79 days later as police arrested people and cleared the streets.

Chan demonstrates the consistency of the Hong Kong government to ignore the Basic Law, to ignore the will of the people and to reinforce Beijing's authority over the city. He focuses on a few pro-democracy activists, both young and old and how they each found their way to be part of this movement.

They include legal scholar Benny Tai Yiu-ting, former sociology professor Chan Kin-man, Agnes Chow Ting, Alex Chow Yong-kang, localist Ray Wong Toi-yeung and social worker Shiu Ka-chun.

It's interesting to hear Agnes Chow explain how she got politically involved through a Facebook page, and threw herself into the cause, while Tai and Chan rationalise the need to have this civil disobedience exercise in the streets. They look to Martin Luther King Jr for inspiration, and believe (naively or not) that people inherently have the right to protest on moral grounds and that they will persevere in the end.

Film interviews Tai (middle) and Chan (right)

Meanwhile the documentary notes that the localist movement grew out of the 2014 movement because they were not given a chance to speak to the crowds in Admiralty, to provide another opinion. The pro-democracy movement acknowledges this mistake which caused the movement to splinter into groups like Hong Kong Indigenous.

While Chan and Tai said they were mentally prepared for prison time by not using air conditioning as much as possible, for Shiu it was heartbreaking to see him with his mother and knowing she would be on her own for several months while her son was in jail. He was doing it for the greater good, but at the same time he was pained to know he would not be there to look after his mother.

However, the documentary feels like it's missing Joshua Wong Chi-fung -- who was considered a key part of the 2014 movement, and pushed onto the international stage by the global media. There is no interview with him at all to learn how he was dealing with being one of the ring leaders of the movement, and also the decisions they were making at the time.

Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai-Chee-ying is also missing in this film, who was literally at Admiralty everyday. He and his newspaper played a major role in helping to get the crowds out.

There is a lot of reflection from Alex Chow, who was a key member of the Occupy Movement and then he became a Buddhist in jail and went overseas to study, probably never to return. 

Chan puts events into context

Director Chan gives a lot of background to explain how the 2014 Umbrella Movement came to be, as more mainlanders flooded the city to buy goods, leaving locals overwhelmed and beginning to identify more strongly as Hongkongers and realising the government was not standing up for them, that they had to do it themselves.

However after the movement was shut down without any resolution, many people were depressed and despondent. So is it any surprise how they were determined to learn from their mistakes in 2014 and have a leaderless pro-democracy movement?

By this time people like Wong and Tai were in jail, the government thinking it had everything under control. Chinese officials in the Liaison Office were completely out of touch with what was going on too, as evidenced by the November 2019 District Council elections where pro-democracy candidates swept 17 out of 18 districts. 

We Have Boots gives a condensed taste of what happened with the government's bungling of the extradition bill and how young people were very creative in fighting back. Their fight became an existential one of literally fighting to keep Hong Kong's rights and freedoms -- a huge burden for the next generation. But they felt they had no choice.

It is believed Chan has plans to follow up We Have Boots with a closer examination of the 2019 protests and that would be good to have some analysis and more importantly a record of what happened. While it is re-traumatising to watch this footage over and over, we need to remember this happened and we saw it happen.

We Have Boots: Hong Kong on the Edge

Directed by Evans Chan

2hours, 9 minutes