After breaking into Hong Kong’s legislature, protesters left a message for Carrie Lam, the city’s top government official, spray-painted on a pillar: “It was you who taught me that peaceful protests are futile”.
To the young activists, the storming of the Legislative Council was an act of desperation. Three times in the past month, tremendous numbers of Hong Kongers — at one point estimated to be more than two million — marched peacefully to protest against a controversial extradition bill with China, which they fear would undermine Hong Kong’s judiciary and its freedom. The government suspended but did not withdraw the law. It did not even meet representatives of those who marched.
I was among the journalists covering the break-in of the building, and I watched as protesters ripped metal bars from the side of the building to smash their way through the windows. Their actions seemed like a breathtaking act of defilement of one of Hong Kong’s institutions.
Yet on closer inspection, I saw that they had zeroed in on certain totems of power. Inside the legislative chamber, someone had blacked out Hong Kong’s emblem — a white bauhinia flower on a red background. They had torn up the Basic Law, effectively Hong Kong’s constitution, on the rostrum. Above it, someone had spray-painted over the words “The People’s Republic of China” in black. There were other graffiti messages on the walls, including, “There are no rioters, only tyranny”, a reference to the government’s announcement that an earlier demonstration, broken up by police firing rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets, constituted “a riot”. But certain parts of the building, like the library, were left untouched. Notes reminded protesters not to damage fragile items such as vases on display. Protesters even left money in the fridge to pay for the soda they drank.
Ms. Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, has vowed to pursue the offenders and condemned their “extreme use of violence”. Beijing criticized their “atrocities”. But this break-in had a clear purpose: It is a collective roar of rage against a government that has failed, by design, to represent the people. The Legislative Assembly’s composition apportions half its seats to business-friendly “functional constituencies”, ensuring that pro-government, pro-Beijing forces are in the majority, regardless of the results of legislative elections.
When those polls don’t produce the representatives Beijing wants, it has used the tools at its disposal to create a more pliant legislature. This happened after the 2016 elections, when a new crop of radical pro-democracy politicians was elected. Beijing then intervened to reinterpret Hong Kong’s Basic Law, retroactively disqualifying six popularly elected politicians over the way in which they took their oaths.
When it comes to Hong Kong politics, it isn’t just that the playing field is tilted. The rules of the game, even the point of the game, are constantly being redrawn. By vandalizing the legislature, protesters have aimed their anger not just at one law but at an entire system that has disenfranchised them.
The vandalism may have alienated many moderates who had previously backed the movement. But I saw large crowds outside the building, who supported the aims of the protesters. They were not firebrands, but students, social workers and physiotherapists who felt there was nothing left for them to lose.
That sense of impotence has been stoked by the failure of the Umbrella Movement in 2014, which sought freer elections but won no concessions after peacefully occupying key thoroughfares for more than two months. One young college student said bitterly: “The Umbrella movement was a big joke. Two months. Nothing gained. So that’s why Hong Kong people are gradually thinking we need to level up our actions”. As news emerged that the police would move in to the building, a young woman protected only by a paper face mask insisted she would stay on to bear witness. “We are scared”, she said. “But we’re more scared that we’ll lose our freedom”.
The protesters left around midnight, and police used tear gas to clear the streets, which had been occupied by some of the tens of thousands who had marched over the course of the day. Many questioned the role of the police: They had been in the Legco building but had suddenly disappeared, allowing protesters the chance to break in. Many suspected the retreat was a deliberate strategy to provide the government with justification to crack down on a “violent” movement. At a surreal 4 a.m. news conference, Ms. Lam, flanked by her unpopular police chief and secretary for security, did nothing to quell the suspicion.
Throughout this hot summer of civil disobedience, Hong Kong’s leaders have been astonishingly tone-deaf. The image of Ms. Lam toasting with champagne glasses at an official 22nd anniversary celebration of Hong Kong’s return to China enraged protesters. She watched the official flag-raising ceremony — accompanied by two hated former chief executives — on a closed circuit television inside a convention center that had been surrounded by rings of security. Outside, protesters held their own ceremony, raising to half-staff a flag depicting a blackened, dying bauhinia.
No one knows what will come next. The protest movement could subside or split into moderate and radical camps. Or the escalating cycles of violence, followed by tear gas, could become commonplace. Much now depends on whether the government will respond to the voices on the street with action. The turmoil is already damaging Hong Kong’s institutions, its international reputation and its desirability as a home. That fear was voiced on another banner, suspended on a wall on the other side of the legislative building, which read, “If we burn, you burn with us”.
Louisa Lim is a senior lecturer at the Center for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.