“Diaspora” is a continuation of “An Exile.” That was about departure from Hong Kong and arrival in a new place. This focuses on the period after arrival.
Both are intended as sequel to the book, Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the freedom struggle, which is about the 2019–2020 protests. That in turn follows As long as there is resistance, there is hope about the period from 2014 to 2018, and Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong about the 2014 Umbrella Movement.
“Diaspora” will appear in installments. The previous installment was “Anna’s Message.”
“A trial” is a continuation of “A rioter,” a story that appeared in my book about the protests, Liberate Hong Kong.
9. A trial
Ah Ming’s trial is just around the corner. It’s been a long time coming. He was arrested more than three years ago. I remember it well.
It was September 29, 2019, two days before the seventieth anniversary of the CCP dictatorship. We were out to ruin the Party’s party. And the police were out to stop us. They had banned the protest that day. When people started to gather in Causeway Bay in defiance of the ban, they were attacked with tear gas. It was one of the first protests that the police tried to prevent from even starting. But we were months into the protests by that point, and people had gotten wise. Most hadn’t even bothered going to the pre-announced gathering point; instead, all of the surrounding streets were flooded with thousands of protesters. When the tear gas attack began, people made their way westward toward Admiralty, the site of government headquarters, a constant flashpoint over the months of protests. As protesters approached, lines of riot police moved to confront them. Protesters rained down petrol bombs, all of which crashed harmlessly to the ground in the no man’s land between police and protesters, a gap that was rapidly closing. As it closed, small groups of raptors darted out from police lines and snatched whatever protesters they could get their hands on, wrestling them to the ground, kneeling on them, binding their wrists with plastic twist-ties, and hauling them away to awaiting police vans.
Ah Ming was among the snatched. I was on my way home later that day when I found out. I’d been out that day too, but was among those who got away. Police had chased protesters back eastward toward Wan Chai, but instead of allowing them to disperse, as they had on countless previous occasions, they trapped them and hunted them down in the small sidestreets. A message on my neighborhood group chat flashed up on my phone screen: Anyone know this guy? Heard he’s from [our neighborhood]. There was Ah Ming dressed in black, his hands tied behind his back, being lead away by police; in the background, I could see the wide gray expanse of Queensway asphalt and beyond it, the luxury shopping mall. I couldn’t have been more than a few hundred meters away from there when he was apprehended. My first thought then has been my constant thought ever since: it would have taken very little shift in planetary alignment for it to have been me who got arrested instead of him. Yeah, I know him, I responded. That’s Ah Ming, my neighbor.
In detention, he was assigned a pro-bono lawyer through one of the organizations that provided legal assistance to arrested protesters. Through him, we heard that the police were intending to charge Ah Ming and most of the others caught up in the mass arrests that day with unlawful assembly. I was relieved: that was a bearable charge. But the police kept them. Under normal circumstances, the police are required by law to either release arrestees or bring them to court within 48 hours. But because of the October 1 holiday, the courts were closed; in such circumstances, police were allowed to detain arrestees for an additional 24 hours. Toward the end of that time, we got word from the lawyer that the police had changed their minds: they were designating the protest in Admiralty a “riot” and were going to charge those apprehended there accordingly. When I heard that, I knew Ah Ming was in trouble. A riot charge is much more severe than unlawful assembly, with a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
*
I wrote about the beginning of Ah Ming’s trial in my book about the protests, Liberate Hong Kong. There, it was an example of the massive support for arrested and prosecuted protesters. Law firms provided legal assistance and organizations covered the costs, financed by the crowdfunding support of millions of ordinary Hong Kongers. On the first day the defendants appeared in court, literally hundreds of supporters showed up, not only family and friends but many others who themselves were protesters or just wanted to show the defendants their sacrifice was valued and would not be forgotten. Ah Ming was among 96 arrested that day on Queensway and Harcourt Road, a block over. When they were brought to court, there were hundreds standing in queues outside the courthouse waiting to get in. The courtroom was full and so was the lobby where tv monitors showing the proceedings were provided. Most supporters didn’t even get as far as the lobby; they just sat outside on the sidewalks in groups, looking like a sit-in.
Now, more than three years after the start of the protests, his story is emblematic of the endless riot trials. Hundreds have concluded and been sentenced to a total of 15,220 years in prison. Hundreds more are on-going. Some have not yet even begun.
*
I wake at 5:29 every morning. In summer, it’s already getting light; in winter, it’s dark as dead of night. HK’s the other side of the world. Literally. By the time I awake, the work day’s almost over there. The courts have closed.
As I eat breakfast, I check the news. I tweet the top crackdown-related stories: civil society organizations forced to close, people who have fled into exile, the latest attacks on the rights to freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, the right to political participation. But the main thing is keeping track of political prisoners: Any new ones that day? Have they been remanded in custody, or sentenced to prison or juvenile detention? How long are their terms? Have any been released? Has anyone been newly arrested?
How do you manage it? someone asks. What he means is, Isn’t that a depressing way to start your day?
Of course, the news is bleak. Of course, the trials are relentless, day after day, seemingly unending. But for me, involvement is rarely depressing; just the opposite. Contained within is a seed of hope: one is doing this because somehow in someway maybe inexplicable there lies the possibility of making a difference. Or not even that; it’s more basic: at least one is doing something, as opposed to nothing. It’s also a way of staying connected. Exiles can so easily lose touch, or gradually forge an image of the place they left quite different from the place as it is now or even from their own experience there. It is also a kind of spiritual practice as well as a form of solidarity: not a single person shall be forgotten; all shall be accounted for; all shall be honored for their sacrifice, and redeemed from the regime’s attempt to portray them as common criminals; every single one counts; every single one is our “hands and feet” (手足--comrade, brother, sister). Monitoring and documenting their cases is a way of baking this ethos into routine, and one’s routine is one’s life. It’s also a reminder to myself: it could just as easily be me on trial, instead of in a safe place on the other side of the world. I got out, I abandoned them, I cannot walk in their shoes, but I can at least ensure they’re not forgotten. In a triumphant Hong Kong—so the vision goes—rather than portrayed as criminals, they will be venerated as heroes.
*
I hardly ever remember my dreams, but a recent dream managed to stick: I am in a cha chaan teng [a traditional HK-style diner]. I turn around and see Ah Au sitting in the booth behind me. He’s a big guy: his nickname, “The Bull,” comes partly from his physique and partly from his personality. He’s famous for wearing suspenders to hold his pants up. Our location in this dream is unclear; neither HK nor abroad, it seems to be a cosmic cha chaan teng—everywhere and nowhere at once. I give him a big spontaneous embrace, a sign it’s been a long time since we last met.
Ah Au’s stayed in HK this whole time. He’s HK through and through; it would be hard to imagine him anywhere else. He’s one of those non-transplantables, the opposite of cosmopolitan, a member of League of Social Democrats, about as grassroots as it gets, one of the few pro-democracy parties that insists on continuing to be active in the era of the national security law. He also ran a pirate radio station called Citizens’ Radio. It would periodically get raided by the police but always persisted. I had a weekly hour-long show called “Get Up, Stand Up” on human rights around the world. I quit when my first child was born. I no longer had time for it—a one-hour radio program takes a lot of preparation, far more than I’d realized in advance. It had a tiny audience, and much of what it did have was spillover from the genuinely popular show preceding it, hosted by, among others, Jimmy Sham (now in pre-trial detention for more than two years, facing the national security law charge of “conspiracy to commit subversion” for participating in a pro-democracy primary). Their show was about LGBT issues and targeted teens. Jimmy had a fan base, and there was a real hunger among young people for LGBT discussion and information at a time when there wasn’t much out there. Both of those programs, his and mine, were the only ones of their kind in HK dedicated to those topics. I also accompanied Ah Au to many demonstrations. I still have an electric candle that he gave my daughter at the memorial march for Liu Xiaobo. I always meant to return it but never got around to it before I left HK.
After I hug Ah Au in the cosmic cha chaan teng, he half-turns to me, looking over his shoulder with ironic, laughing, mischievous arched eyebrows that also contain—am I just imagining it?—a hint of accusation. “Did you go to jail?” he asks.
The day after this dream, I wake to learn that Ah Au is on trial yet again, this time together with two others, for “unauthorised displaying/affixing of posters on Government land.” Three banners at a very small protest. As Ah Au put it in his own defense, “I’ve been displaying banners all over HK for decades, and this is the first time I’ve ever been charged with this offense. What’s changed? Not me.” This is his fifth trial in three years. Most are for relatively minor offenses, typical of the relentless run-of-the-mill persecution to which he and the few others who insist on persevering are subjected. Last June 30, the national security police searched his home and the homes of five other LSD members and warned them not to protest the next day, July 1. Some of the charges they face are unheard of. My favorite: “flying a balloon in controlled airspace.” On January 1, 2021, he released a balloon that said “release all political prisoners” in front of government headquarters, apparently “controlled airspace,” according to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Act, where “a balloon exceeding two metres in any linear dimension at any stage of its flight, including any basket or other equipment attached to the balloon, shall not be flown.” For that, he was fined HK$2,500. His longest prison term up to now is 10 months for “inciting unlawful assembly” on July 1, 2020, the first full day the national security law was in effect. When he finished his ten-month sentence, photos of him emerging from prison showed a thinner Ah Au. Most prisoners lost weight; in his, it was probably for the better, though he did seem a bit weaker, as if some of the stuffing had been knocked out of him. He’s in his sixties now, and slower than he once was.
I remember the last protest I went to with him, some time before 2019. I don't remember what it was about. What I recall is that he climbed up on an uneven, wobbly barrier directly across from the police. I and another person rushed forward and grabbed a leg each, bracing ourselves against him. He vigorously shook his finger at the police, causing the barrier to wobble even more. I remember thinking only, I hope he doesn't fall backwards. Even now, looking back, I still wonder how he managed to stay up there.
All of this history, this past flashes through my mind when he says to me in the dream of the cosmic cha chaan teng, “Did you go to jail?” I stand accused. He’d never say such a thing to me; it’s my own unconscious speaking.
*
There is a Telegram channel dedicated to sharing information about corresponding with political prisoners. Often letters to a particular prisoner are solicited for birthday or holidays like Lunar New Year. On one day, for example, there is Alberto, a university student who’s been convicted of riot at Polytechnic University and is asking people to donate to help cover expenses related to being in prison. He is also hoping to share experiences learning languages and other pursuits he wants to undertake behind bars. There is Jessica, a member of Student Politicism, who still has another year to go in prison. She was convicted of sedition along with four others in the group, essentially for running street stalls. Another member of Student Politicism, Wong Yat-chin, is about to have a birthday, and the people running his account ask people to write birthday messages to him. The regime has smashed formal organizations assisting political prisoners, in an attempt to destroy the mechanisms of solidarity. With so many going to prison on the one hand and fleeing the city on the other, it’s become harder to stay in contact. Sometimes the ties that bind seem tenuous, as if they could snap without warning or simply disintegrate over time.
Not long after leaving HK, I vowed I would write a letter a week to a political prisoner. I started out writing to people I know, then reached out to others whose cases I came across or who requested letters. I am rarely short of words, but I actually find the letter-writing hard to do. I don’t know what to write. There’s so much I have to avoid: their cases, politics; I can’t say much about myself, my life or my work, or send news from the diaspora that could in any way implicate others. I either trail off into vague generalities—about “transcending the moment,” for instance—or descend into details of daily life. I think to myself, “I wouldn’t find this letter interesting if I received it in prison.” But maybe just about any letter is welcome, interesting or not.
*
The number of political prisoners in Hong Kong recently surpassed 1,500. HK has among the fastest growing populations of political prisoners in the world, rivalled only by Belarus and Burma. There are countries such as Egypt and Turkey that have far more political prisoners—in the tens of thousands—but those populations tend to be relatively stable, neither rising nor falling dramatically. This comparative indicator gives a sense of just how politically repressive HK has become and how quickly the situation has deteriorated. HK’s record is all the more remarkable given that it has a tradition of rule of law, albeit now rapidly eroding, that Belarus and Burma, with long authoritarian legacies, lack.
There are so many trials—nearly 3,000 in all—, they take years to wend their way through the judicial system. By the end of 2022, three years after the 2019 protests, more than 800 people have been charged with riot, and of those, only 331 trials have concluded. And that’s not to mention those on trial on national security law and sedition charges. In their cases, most are already in detention—remanded in custody pending completion of trial, whereas riot defendants are typically on bail pending completion of trial and only taken into custody when convicted.
The average sentence for riot is about three years and eight months in prison. In only about 40 percent of convictions was evidence presented in court of the defendants’ active participation in the riot, such as throwing objects or blocking roads. In about 60 percent of riot convictions, defendants were found guilty based on “environmental” evidence—their presence, the clothes they wore and their gear—sufficient to identify them as protesters and therefore active participants in the “joint enterprise” of riot.
And the sentences come on top of the multi-year wait for their trials to even get started. During that long spell, their lives are essentially on hold: they are unable to make long or even medium-term plans since they have the shadow of potentially years in prison hanging over them, all for what amounted to a few brief moments in 2019.
*
Ah Ming’s trial of 96 was divided in two based on the locations of arrest—one group of 52 on Queensway, the other group of 44 on Harcourt Road. Those groups were then further broken down into batches of about a dozen each. Ah Ming ended up being tried along with eight others.
For over three years since the their first court appearance in October 2019, there have been a number of procedural hearings. Like all riot trials, their trial was transferred to District Court, where the maximum sentence for riot is seven years in prison.
Every time I checked in with Ah Ming, he just shrugged. “It’s a joke” has been his continual refrain. I wondered whether he was really so laconic. But his attitude seemed to be, I’m in this unjust system and there’s nothing I can do about it; it’s like fate; all I can do is decide how I’m going to respond to reality. Not that I ever got that many words out of him. He has always been a man of few words, and even fewer digitally. I’ve done my best to keep in touch but hear more about him from our neighbors than from himself.
His apartment is right next to my old office, on the side of a steep tree-covered hill. The only way there is via a labyrinth of interlocking, ascending steps straight out of Escher. If you didn’t know the way and had no one to guide you, it would be hard to find. An almost secret place. Even now, on the other side of the earth, my mind traces the path. When Ah Ming was gone, the neighbors fed the cats. In fact, back in September 2019, after I told the others in our neighborhood group chat that it was Ah Ming who’d been arrested, the first response was, “I’ll feed the cats!”
In the intervening years, I and several others in our neighborhood group have fled to other parts of the world. Others have gone to ground, reckoning it’s no longer safe to be in communication with the rest of us. From four different continents, we share information and coordinate support. Not that he needs us: his main support base is his church.
Ah Ming is like a lot of people in HK—reticent: I might know them a long time before learning something basic about their life. I knew his ex-wife for ages before discovering the two of them used to be married. They were both musicians. Oboe was her instrument. He seemed to play just about everything, and was as much a composer and teacher as an instrumentalist.
I remember once after the regime announced it was introducing a new law criminalizing “insult” to the PRC anthem in response to the crowd’s non-stop booing of it for every home match of the HK football team from the Umbrella Movement onward, he organized a demonstration of musicians; he played a song on a flute from inside a cage. I think of that image now that the regime is literally trying to ban the protest anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong.”
*
Their trial begins in early December. Five of the defendants plead guilty. That leaves Ah Ming and three others to stand trial. He’d told me all along he was going to plead not guilty. Different defendants take radically different approaches. Some decide to plead guilty, figuring the chances of being acquitted are low (they’re right about that), and the best they can hope for is a sentence reduction for their guilty plea. Others plead not guilty, either because they think they have some special circumstances that lead them to believe they just might get off, or simply out of principle: I have done no wrong, I have committed no crime. Ah Ming never said so, but in his case, I think it’s the latter. Of course, I appreciate the defiance, but that’s easy for me so far away.
There isn’t much to say about the trial. It is shorter than expected and follows the script of pretty much all of the hundreds of riot trials. All the prosecution has to show is that the defendants were there, wore protest clothes, had protest gear. By this point, the trials have come to resemble objects on the conveyor belt of an assembly line—you can predict them right down to the scripts of the prosecutors and judges. In his verdict, the judge inevitably makes an obligatory statement to the effect that lawlessness cannot be tolerated, no matter a person’s political views; the incident in question is “very serious;” a “deterrent” sentence is necessary.
The verdict is scheduled for early January. I am not optimistic: there’s usually only one way these trials go—the conviction rate for “riot” is about 90 percent. Knowing that, if convicted, Ah Ming’ll be immediately taken into custody, I ask him for an address where I can send letters while he’s in prison. (Many political prisoners arrange for others they know outside of prison to receive mail and then bring it to them, rather than requesting that letters be sent directly to the prison.) Up to now, I haven’t wanted to ask, for fear that would make it seem I thought it was inevitable he was going down. His response is typically brief—no last sighs or exclamations about his misfortune, no expression of emotion, just: Contact my ex-wife; she’ll be the one with updates.
Though divorced, they seem to have a friendly relationship, or at least an enduring sense of responsibility to one another. I remember it was her I accompanied to his first court appearance three years ago. She’s stood with him every step of the way. When I contact her, I get an immediate response with far more information about Ah Ming than I’ve ever gotten from him: “Please don’t worry. This man has got a really high level of concern from different parties. He has grace following him, so even in jail I believe he’ll live a very fulfilling life, different but not worse than outside. People from his church will bring him a guitar and manuscript paper so that he can compose. Through his church, he is well prepared practically and mentally.” I find that image appealing: Ah Ming making music behind bars.
She also tells me that he and his family receive support from a small organization helping prisoners. It sprang up after the regime forced some of the main support groups for political prisoners to close—Spark Alliance, Civil Human Rights Front, 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, Wall-fare. It is tiny by comparison, but is doing good work, very low-key so as to stay out of the sights of the regime.
Her message reminds me of the obvious: in my absence, life goes on. As decimated as civil society organizations have been, many people persist, maintaining person-to-person relations, living in “internal exile,” supporting each other however they can. Even though much has been destroyed, they carry on, each in their own courageous way.
It also evokes a vivid memory: It is during the November 2019 District Council elections. We are campaigning out on the street, catching commuters on their way home. It is just after the devastating police sieges of Chinese and Polytechnic Universities. There is a unceasing ominous atmosphere, like a thrum in the air, a general awareness that the moment we stop fighting, we will be crushed. There we are, our innocent selves, the candidate—an ebullient middle-aged woman who hugs everyone in that non-hugging society—, her fellow campaigners, some kids, a few dogs, all living what will prove to be our last moments of relative freedom. Ah Ming’s wife and some of her musician friends serenade the commuters with pro-democracy songs. By late evening, the musicians cut loose. The rest of us dance, happy to be alive, in the moment, then and there, our innocent selves, for as long as it lasts. It is one of the most carefree moments from that incredibly intense period that I can recall.
(As we now know, those would be the last free and fair elections HK would ever have, at least as long as the Party remains in power. We won them so decisively, capturing more than 80 percent of seats, that it imposed the national security law and pushed through another law proclaiming only “patriots” [CCP loyalists] could run in elections.)
A day before Ah Ming’s verdict, a journalist asks to be put in touch. I don’t want to bother him, so I contact his ex-wife. She thinks he is “not unwilling to talk but just very busy. He needs to finish an orchestral arrangement before the hearing, so best not to disturb him.” That’s how he’s spending probably his last hours of freedom.
The next day, Ah Ming and the three others who plead not guilty are convicted.
Three days later, the altogether nine co-defendants are sentenced to between 28 and 50 months in prison. Ah Ming gets the longest sentence of all of them—50 months—because, the judge says, there is evidence he participated actively in the riot for at least fifteen minutes: he threw umbrellas and bricks at police, had a can of spray paint, and wore a t-shirt with anti-CCP and anti-police slogans on it. The judge opines, “Violating the righteous law” is only acceptable in “extremely repressive and tyrannical” societies where there is no other option. Hong Kong, he said, is “not yet at such a stage.”
I sit down and start my first letter to Ah Ming. Who, I wonder, is feeding the cats now?
Epilogue, seven months on
It’s now been more than half a year since Ah Ming was imprisoned. I’ve written him several letters.
I hear about him through common acquaintances. Just the other day, I got this message from his ex-wife:
He has so much caring from friends so is writing back to many…… I was quite disappointed when he told me couldn’t manage to write back to all. I hope he writes to you. I visited him last Sunday. He was fine and looked very good, even better, I think, than when he was outside. He goes to bed at 8-ish and wakes up at 6:30 in the morning. His work is sewing but I don’t know exactly what he actually sews. And he said the food is not bad. What a strange man!