Trying protest leaders fairly would show the city still has a fair justice system.
On March 27,2017, the leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong turned themselves in to the police. The group included founders of the movement—Benny Tai, a professor; Chan Kin-man, a sociologist; and Chu Yiu-ming, a pastor—as well as other student leaders, lawmakers, and politicians.
Footage of the moment, showing them waving to supporters and putting their palms together in a gesture of respect, recalls Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Burghers of Calais. Its bronze figures depict a story from 14th-century France: Six leaders of a besieged town surrendered to England in hopes of sparing their city.
But here the stories differ. The burghers of Calais stepped out in an act of sacrifice and were saved by an act of the queen’s mercy. In their arrest, the Umbrella Movement organizers were accepting the consequences of an act of civil disobedience but did not look to be spared by leaders in Beijing. Rather, they placed their trust in Hong Kong’s rule of law and the provisions in Hong Kong’s Basic Law—the constitution of the Special Administrative Region—for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The trial of the Umbrella Movement leaders began this week, and on Monday they entered a plea of not guilty. The proceedings will be a litmus test for Hong Kong, but also an opportunity to uphold one of the territory’s key values.
Hong Kong’s rule of law has been increasingly eroded by the government’s fealty to Beijing. The Umbrella Movement itself was a pro-democracy protest that lasted 79 days and converged on three main sites, including government headquarters in the city’s Central District. The movement was a call for the direct election of Hong Kong’s leader, the chief executive, and symbolized a political awakening for a generation of Hong Kongers increasingly keen on real democracy in their city.
Protest has a long history in Hong Kong, but the Umbrella Movement demonstrators have found themselves criminalized on often flimsy grounds by a government increasingly eager to placate Beijing. Protestors have been arrested for “unlawful assembly” and “public disorder,” while this week’s trial includes charges for “conspiracy to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to commit public nuisance.”
Events since 2014 have not inspired confidence in Hong Kong’s freedom of speech or rule of law. In 2015, five booksellers disappeared, abducted across the border into China and held in extrajudicial detention. In 2017, elected lawmakers in the Legislative Council were barred from taking their seats for repeating their oaths of office in ways deemed disrespectful to China. Most recently, Victor Mallet, the Asia editor for the Financial Times, was stripped of his visa status, likely because he had hosted a talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club by a speaker who advocates for Hong Kong’s independence.
