In March 2019 the government of Hong Kong proposed a bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. In November 2019, I was in Hong Kong and spoke to various people who participated in the anti-extradition bill protests. The text below is a report of what I witnessed, as these protests were remarkable for tactics, solidarity, and wideness of outreach.
The extradition law
In March 2019, protests against the planned extradition law began in Hong Kong and developed into a comprehensive pro-democracy movement. According to estimates by the Hong Kong-based organization Civil Human Rights Front, they reached their highest level in June with 1.4 million citizens being involved. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is part of China, but unlike mainland China, the autonomous territory still had some democratic rights in the summer of 2019, including freedom of expression and assembly and an independent judiciary. The planned extradition law would have severely restricted this independence and would have allowed the authorities in Hong Kong to extradite people suspected of a crime to mainland China. For this reason, the protesters demanded the withdrawal of the extradition law and the resignation of Prime Minister Carrie Lam.
After the occupation of the Legislative Council on 1 July, the protesters added to their demand for Lam’s resignation a call for free elections. During the protests in November 2019, police violence rose sharply and the authorities arbitrarily arrested around 4,000 people. Further demands were then added including an independent investigation into the police violence, a demand for the release of the detained activists, and a call to stop the labeling of the protesters as “rioters”. After long protests, the Hong Kong government withdrew the Extradition Act in October 2019.
As a result of the arbitrary arrests and the police's brutal treatment of the protesters, criticism from the population increased. Although the law was repealed, protests continued concerning issues such as democracy and human rights. These were interrupted by the COVID pandemic, and on June 30, 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) passed the National Security Law in Hong Kong. The law criminalizes the organization of civil resistance and protests and any criticism of China’s central government. Hong Kong was dramatically changed as a result, the pro-democratic movement was swallowed up in public space by the Chinese central government. Pro-democracy news agencies were closed, and material about civil resistance was censored. Laws have been continuously tightened in Hong Kong since 2019. In March 2024, a new national security law, known as Article 23, was passed, which severely affects human rights in the city. The provisions of the Article are intentionally vague so that it remains unclear where the red lines run. And, if Hong Kong law contradicts Beijing law, then the law of the People’s Republic of China applies.
Around 1.4 million people took part in the 2019 protests and sustained the pro-democracy movement. Like the Arab Spring in 2010 and the Occupy movements in 2011, Hong Kong protesters adopted decentralization and autonomy to encourage every citizen to participate and organize the protests in different ways and to become part of the movement. The guiding principles moving the organization of the protests in Hong Kong were 無大台 (no central stage), 不割蓆 (don’t split), 一個都不能少 (we can’t lose one person), and 兄弟爬山，各自努力 (we keep fighting, each in our way). Protestors communicated anonymously on platforms such as Telegram and LIHKG, the Hong Kong version of Reddit. As several activists had been identified and arrested during earlier protests in 2014 after platforms such as Yahoo China and the online forum HKGolden leaked their users’ data to the authorities, with the switch to Telegram in the summer of 2019, the messenger service was exposed to various DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks in parallel to the protests, which, according to Telegram, originated from Chinese IP addresses. According to Hong Kong activists, the online forum LIHKG also was increasingly attacked in December 2019 by the “Great Cannon”, the state-operated, cyber weapon of the Chinese government.
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The activists used the online platform LIHKG to plan and coordinate the protests, exchange information about current events, and support each other. Materials, posters, and manuals on public safety were also shared open source, such as, how to protect yourself from tear gas or how to extinguish tear gas canisters, and how to disperse rallies within a few minutes as soon as the police advance. As police violence increased, an anonymous member of the LIHKG community developed the HKmap app which citizens used to track and document police locations and the extent of violence. The app aimed to increase the safety of citizens in public spaces and reduce the risk of arrests. This also increased participation in the protests and the “hit-and-run” tactic emerged. Groups came together to protest and then ran away as soon as the police approached them. With HKmap they followed safe routes and reunited half an hour later in another part of the district.
The Chinese central government put pressure on Apple and accused the company of supporting criminal activities. Apple then removed HKmap from the App Store as the app allegedly violated its guidelines. At the same time, the authorities began shutting down the internet network in individual districts to prevent the groups from networking with each other. The activists then switched to mesh networks such as Bridgefly and FireChat, which are also used to coordinate civilians after natural disasters. Mesh networks are not based on mobile communications or Wi-Fi, and cannot be centrally controlled and switched off; instead, each mobile phone becomes a router in its own right, creating a network of connections between all members of a group. With each additional group member, the network and its range expand. The strategies and tools of the pro-democracy movement were all based on crowdsourcing and enabled the mobilization and organization of protests, in which everyone could find a way to participate either on the streets or by coordinating the background.
The Milk Tea Alliance
During the protests in Hong Kong, the Milk Tea Alliance, an anti-authoritarian online movement comprising users from Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, and Myanmar, emerged in parallel. It developed from a tweet by the Thai actor Vachirawit Chivaaree. In April 2020, the actor shared a photo on Twitter in which Hong Kong was implied to be an independent state. His Twitter profile was then flooded by Chinese online nationalists - with the correction that Hong Kong is not an independent nation, but a semi-autonomous Chinese city. Chinese internet nationalists regularly create actions in which pro-Uyghur groups and companies are attacked, as well as Taiwanese and Thai sites, and social media channels that are critical of the Chinese central government.
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In the Twitter shitstorm of April 2020, Chinese users demanded an apology, and Vachirawit Chivaaree apologised, but the debate continued. Thai Twitter users criticised the censorship efforts from the Chinese side, while Chinese nationalists tried to hit Thai citizens’ national pride by insulting the Thai government and sharing photos of the massacre at Thammasat University, in which government troops killed protesting left-wing students in 1976. But these posts were not taken up as intended: the Thais simply agreed with the insults to their national institutions. This exchange met with extremely positive reactions in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Soon after, their citizens joined the shitstorm and spread content in memes under hashtags such as "Say it louder!". Restricted by censorship and propaganda, the Chinese nationalists did not realize that a large proportion of young Thais were critical of their government.
The Milk Tea Alliance, broadly and transnationally organized, operates on two levels: first, by disseminating strategies for coordinating and organizing protests and by documenting human rights violations such as the persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the oppression of the stateless Rohingya in Myanmar, and against China building more dams on the Mekong River, which has caused massive environmental damage and drought in countries such as Laos and Thailand. The impact of the alliance became visible in Thailand in August 2020 and in Myanmar in February 2021. In August 2020, Thai activists took to the streets against the authoritarian monarchy and used techniques that were deployed previously in Hong Kong; they shared footage under hashtags related to the Milk Tea Alliance. Wearing masks and yellow helmets to protect against tear gas and facial recognition systems also became common in Thailand. So did the use of mesh networks to quickly disseminate information to many people within a district. Also, the hit-and-run tactic was used to cause disruption and minimize the risk of being arrested. Transnational solidarity campaigns emerged in the districts under the banner of the Alliance.
As the Thai protests grew, the movements in Thailand and Hong Kong supported each other by organizing rallies and holding protest signs to express their support for the others abroad. In Hong Kong and Taipei, they also organized demonstrations in support of the protests in Thailand, as well as crowd-funding to raise money for equipment and legal fees. Something similar happened in Myanmar when the military overthrew the democratically elected government in February 2021 and arrested the controversial pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Within a few hours, Milk Tea Alliance hashtags related to Myanmar went viral across Asian countries. These hashtags were not only used to share news about current developments in Myanmar, but also to translate into Burmese protest and organizational strategies from Hong Kong, and material for how to cope with authoritarian oppression. Through these hashtags, the Burmese quickly gained access to the protest tactics and security measures from Hong Kong. Hand signals and gestures that had previously been used in Hong Kong and Bangkok were also used during the protests. The equipment, consisting of yellow helmets and gas masks, was also adopted. The opportunity to connect with like-minded activists in the region through the Milk Tea Alliance strengthened the large-scale pro-democracy protests. Since the protests in Myanmar turned into a civil war, part of the alliance now organizes weekly online- and offline meetings to strengthen networks and cooperation between activists in the region. The Alliance has evolved from a widespread hashtag and online movement to an offline local form of citizen organization with a transnational structure.
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Even if the contexts against which the protests are directed are different in the respective countries, they have a pro-democratic orientation in common. Through the cross-national protests, activists also avoid state and military violence, for example by the Thai protesters supporting the protests in Hong Kong without being exposed to repression under the National Security Law, and activists in Hong Kong supporting Thai protesters without being subject to the strict lèse-majesté law, which imposes severe penalties on critics. This mutual solidarity and cooperation not only strengthens the pan-Asian online movement, but also expands the local offline movements in Hong Kong, Myanmar, Thailand, and Taiwan.
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This is the first chapter of the series “Narrating Protest” by Noa Jaari. The column explores different social practices and grassroots movements worldwide and their impact on social change.
- IMAGE CREDITS
Cover: © Airam D. , In June 2019, over one million people demonstrated in Hong Kong against the extradition law and the protests developed into a broad movement.
fig. 1: © NJ, Screenshot of the HKmap app from October 2019 which citizens used to document police movements and operations.
fig. 2: © Joseph Chan, In June 2019, citizens began using Pepe the Frog protest signs at rallies and demonstrations to draw attention to police violence and the five demands of the pro-democracy movement.
fig. 3: © Han Min T. , Pro-democracy and anti-extraction demonstration in June 2019 in Wan Chai on Hennessy Road in the northern part of Hong Kong Island.
