With the passage of the national security law, pro-democracy activists face the same dilemma as their mainland counterparts: choosing between fear and their ideals.
After the Chinese legislature unanimously passed the national security law that would curb free speech and protests in Hong Kong, my initial thought was, “Is Hong Kong just like Beijing now?”
The first time I felt that Hong Kong was becoming like Beijing was in the spring of 2017. I had been invited to lunch with Chan Kin-man, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a co-founder of the 2014 Occupy Central protests, which became known as the Umbrella Movement.
Only days before, he had been charged over his role in the pro-democracy protests. We sat in the garden of a dim sum restaurant, facing a beautiful bay in the New Territories region of Hong Kong. Bougainvillea was blooming around us. Mr. Chan talked about how he was preparing himself physically and psychologically for life in jail.
It was déjà vu for me. I’d had many similar conversations with people in Beijing over the years. Like Mr. Chan, they were intellectuals who aspired to bring democracy, liberty and justice to China. Like Mr. Chan, they became thorns in the government’s side because they talked about, wrote about or organized activities to pursue those ideals.
Since 2013, a growing number of activists, intellectuals and human rights lawyers have been detained by the authorities. Most were released after a few weeks, a few months, or a year. A couple of them are still behind bars.
For a while, jail was a popular topic at dinner tables. A man who spent a year in prison after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown liked to say that the guards and cellmates treated political prisoners with more respect in his time than they did now. A woman who was jailed for political reasons both in the late 1970s and in 2014 compared her experiences then and now at a big welcome back dinner on Christmas Eve. A man we call “Pangzi,” or “Fatty,” shed 60 pounds after a year behind bars. He talked about how he was brutally beaten. Once, the assault was so bad that he lost control of his bowels.
The other guests at the tables listened, then discussed what they might do when that day arrived, just like my conversation with Mr. Chan three years ago.
Mr. Chan said he was trying to decide what books he would bring with him to jail. In Hong Kong, every inmate is allowed to keep six books. We joked that it was great he had the freedom to choose his books.
In the mainland, prisoners have very limited access to reading material. One story a law professor likes to tell is that years ago, he tried to send two books to a dissident friend in jail.
The guard rejected “Fortress Besieged,” a satirical novel about the lives of Chinese intellectuals during World War II. It is famous for the quote, “Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out.
