In Hong Kong you live without freedom – Ilaria Maria Sala

Hong Kong has been back under Chinese control for less than twenty-four years. This, it seems, was the maximum period of semidemocracy that China could tolerate. When Hong Kong was a colony, there was no democracy, but by the time it moved from the UK to China in 1997, it had a dynamic, news-hungry press and publishing house. Civil society organizations were already numerous and strong (they have strengthened further since then). University libraries were a must-see for any scholar and schools, despite criticism for excessive emphasis on lessons to be learned by heart, did not indoctrinate citizens to love their homeland, anthem and flag.

Hong Kong, a refugee society, had been generous whenever China had been engulfed by earthquakes or floods, but also by humanitarian disasters, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre. His anarchy and his ability to fend for himself inspired wacky films capable of bringing martial arts to the world. And his attachment to a minority language, Cantonese, misled anyone who said that China was one and unified. If Cantonese invents characters to transcribe new concepts, or digs up old ones to brush up on expressions that are back in fashion, in Beijing the language bureaucrats insist that there is only one Chinese language, the one spoken in the north, only one set of characters, and that everything else is dialect. Even before Taiwan rediscovered the dignity of its languages, Hong Kong used puns that were incomprehensible to those who did not want to accept the multicultural dimension of China.

It is not an obituary, although it may seem so. But an existential reflection. How do you live in a place that is losing its freedoms? Or rather: how right is it to live in a place that is losing its freedom?

Everything is in the balance since the protests in 2019 in Hong Kong. Protesters used their energy, their anger and their bodies poisoned by tear gas and stinging spray to claim as loudly as possible what they were promised and what they think they deserve: true universal suffrage, the ability to have a say. on public management of Hong Kong. For Beijing this is intolerable. Especially in the era of Xi Jinping, the man who, in order to centralize power on himself and his most faithful allies, has disrupted everything that had been built by Deng Xiaoping onwards, so that nothing can endanger him. Hong Kong is a nuisance mosquito that keeps you awake at night, the kind that seems to have squashed and instead nothing, they start buzzing in your ear again. But unlike mosquitoes, Hong Kong doesn’t want to suck blood, it just wants to be independent and have the freedom to express itself. And Beijing is fed up.

On January 6, 53 people were arrested on suspicion of breaking the new and free-killing law on national security. Released on bail, 47 of them returned to prison on February 28, and taken to court to determine if they can await trial at liberty (apparently not). Among them, Gwyneth Ho, a journalist beaten during an attack by strangers against the demonstrators, who continued the live streaming also from the ground; Eddie Chu Hoi Dick, environmentalist who challenged the excessive power of real estate developers, sympathizing with the dispossessed peasants of their lands; Lester Shum and Joshua Wong, leader of the 2014 demonstrations; Jeffrey Andrews, the first member of the ethnic minority to have tried to run for election; Jimmy Sham, one of the most respected LGBT rights activists. They ended up under accusation for having participated in the primary in July in view of the legislative elections, which were then canceled.

Xia Baolong, from the Communist Party, announced that only patriots, that is, those who love China and love the party, will be able to stand for election. This is the logic behind the arrests: the party admits only friends or enemies, as Carl Schmitt wrote, one of Adolf Hitler’s ideologues and jurists today much appreciated in China. There is no middle ground. Power is in the hands of the party, and Hong Kong cannot be considered an exception. The promises made in recent years are secondary to the concept of absolute sovereignty, even that Schmittiano. In Beijing’s vision of politics, the only acceptable solution is these arrests and the twisting of the electoral law, so that only candidates approved by China can stand for election.

So: how to live now? The answer that has been running around on social networks in recent days is a list of advice: stay in solidarity; be professional; read a lot; learn a craft activity; exercise; having children; study world history; make friends with other people around the world; defend the truth.