Arrest of anti-government activists in Hong Kong spur concerns in Metro Vancouver
Credit to Author: Joanne Lee-Young| Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 00:56:58 +0000
The arrests on Friday in Hong Kong of several well-known, anti-government activists and a ban on a mass rally planned for Saturday could spur or subdue tensions there.
And with a mirror battle going on between those for and against anti-Hong Kong government protesters in cities such as Vancouver that have a large Chinese diaspora, there is also fresh outrage, but also fear and concern.
“We all felt really shocked by what happened so quickly. All of a sudden, these people got arrested,” said Jane Li, a Coquitlam resident and member of Vancouver Hong Kong Political Activists, a student group.
Police on Friday morning in Hong Kong arrested Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, along with others. Wong and Chow are prominent activists who were student leaders of protests in Hong Kong in 2014. The two were released by Friday evening on bail. In total, police said 28 people, including some pro-democracy lawmakers, were arrested.
Although police have identified hundreds of other protesters, these ones were seen as a high-profile escalation after a summer of street protests that have mostly been peaceful, but, at times, violent and chaotic.
They came at the end of another tense week, which included the first time a police officer fired a gunshot and Reuters reported that China’s central government rejected a proposal from Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s leader, to “withdraw the extradition bill,” which sparked the protests, “and ordered her not to yield to any of the protesters’ other demands (including an inquiry into allegations of excessive police force) at that time.”
The “rebuff” by Beijing of Lam’s proposal “represents concrete evidence of the extent to which China is controlling the Hong Kong government’s response to the unrest,” reported Reuters.
The Hong Kong police made it “very clear that the arrests were made after a comprehensive investigation by the Organized Crime and Triad bureau,” said the Consulate General of People’s Republic of China in Vancouver in an email to Postmedia. “At present, to stop violence, end chaos and restore order in Hong Kong is the biggest appeal of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, including the vast majority of the Hong Kong people.”
Pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow arrive at the Eastern Court by police van after being arrested on suspicion for organising illegal protests, in Hong Kong, China August 30, 2019. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
In Vancouver, Li said that over half of the people in her group of 25 or so are students in Vancouver who have close ties to Hong Kong, either travelling there regularly or with close family members living there.
While other Vancouver-based groups may feel less deterred in their open support of protesters in Hong Kong, she sensed a new chill in some of her fellow members.
“We are supportive of other groups (who back the protesters) but, at the same time, more people in our group are now more hesitant about expressing their ideas and speaking out. What if we return to Hong Kong and are identified as being against the government,” said Li.
“Even if (students and others in her group) live in Canada, they may have family in Hong Kong or they may have plans to regularly go to Hong Kong. You just don’t know what to expect the next time you go to visit and when you pass through the border.”
One of the members of the group, she said, had been in Hong Kong on July 1 when some protesters smashed glass windows and doors to storm into legislative council offices.
“He was in the vicinity of Joshua Wong. There is a feeling of ‘why is it only Joshua Wong being arrested when these protests have been leaderless?’ It’s a show of obvious oppression to arrest Joshua Wong so that regular citizens will be afraid to go onto the streets.”
In Hong Kong, the Civil Human Rights Front, which has organized some of the largest of turnouts in protests that are heading into their 13th week, cancelled the mass rally it was planning for Saturday after a bid to overturn a police ban failed. Police said they were concerned about violence.
Swana Luk of the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement said a rally for Saturday afternoon near the Vancouver Public Library’s downtown location on West Georgia Street was planned a week ago.
“We did not know what was going to happen this (past) week,” said Luk, adding that the rally in Vancouver is connected to others in 35 cities around the world to mark the anniversary of the decision by Beijing five years ago to reject demands for universal suffrage in Hong Kong.
In a statement, the organization said that following “intimidation and harassment by pro-Beijing counter protesters in the last few weeks, the rallies wanted to “show the world that we will not give into the rhetoric that threatens democracy.”