Hong Kong protests, one year later

One year ago Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong gathered for a march that became the start of the semiautonomous Chinese city’s biggest political crisis and the broadest expression of public anger with Beijing in decades.

In the months that followed, protesters filled the city’s streets, broke into the local legislature and vandalised it, staged sit-ins at the airport, and turned a university campus into a fiery battleground. Earlier this year, the demonstrations quieted amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But Beijing’s push to impose national security laws over the territory has prompted some protesters to return to the streets. Their presence is a reminder that many thorny issues — including the demonstrators’ demands for greater official accountability — remain unresolved.

Here is a look at how we got here.

Crowding the Streets

Organisers estimate that 1 million people marched June 9, 2019, against a proposed law allowing extraditions to mainland China. The rally was mostly peaceful, though some protesters and police officers clashed after midnight. Three days later, police fired tear gas at protesters who had blocked a major highway outside the local legislature. The heavy-handed response prompted another June march that organisers said drew nearly 2 million people.

Crashing the Legislature

On July 1, hundreds of thousands of people marched to denounce police brutality and Beijing’s growing influence over the city on the 22nd anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. A group of demonstrators also smashed their way into the local legislature using metal bars and makeshift battering rams. That confrontation reflected a wider attempt by the protest movement to target symbols of authority, including local police stations and the Chinese government’s liaison office in the city.

Clashing With Police

Street clashes between black-clad protesters and police became routine. Increasingly, protesters coordinated their actions on the fly using encrypted messaging — an effort to evade police and new restrictions on public gatherings. Some began carrying makeshift weapons, attacking opponents on the streets and vandalising businesses seen as supporting police and the government. A slogan from the movie series “The Hunger Games” — “If we burn, you burn with us” — became a call to arms.

Getting Attacked by a Mob

On July 21, after protesters vandalised Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, a mob attacked a group of protesters in a train station. Dozens were injured, including journalists and a pro-democracy legislator. The appearance of police inaction that night would fuel widespread anger toward the Hong Kong police force and suspicion that officers were unwilling to protect anti-government protesters.

Shutting Down the Airport

By August, Hong Kong’s sleek and efficient airport was the centre of protesters’ focus. First there were days of sit-ins by demonstrators who wanted to voice their complaints to some of the tens of thousands of travellers who move through the airport each day. The protesters then blocked some travellers, snarling flights and causing hundreds of cancellations. After protesters attacked two men from mainland China, the airport obtained a court injunction barring access to its terminals to anyone expect employees and travellers bearing flight tickets.

Firing at Protesters

While Beijing marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct 1 with a military parade, protesters in Hong Kong held widespread demonstrations that turned violent. An officer fired a live round that hit an 18-year-old who, according to video, appeared to hit the officer with a pipe. The teenager was arrested and taken to a hospital for treatment. Days later, the Hong Kong government used emergency powers to ban face masks at protests, a move that was scaled back in a series of court rulings.

Taking Universities by Storm

In some of the most dramatic moments of the protest movement, university campuses became focal points of unrest in November after a student demonstrator died in a fall from a parking garage during a police operation. Protesters occupied the Chinese University of Hong Kong for five days. Activists in and around the Hong Kong Polytechnic University fought off police by hurling Molotov cocktails and launching arrows from bows. Police later arrested hundreds of protesters after a lengthy siege.

Winning an Election

The protest movement earned a stunning victory in late November as pro-democracy candidates captured most of the seats in local elections for district councils, one of the lowest elected offices in the city. It was a vivid expression of the city’s aspirations and its anger with the Chinese government, and the protests subsided for several weeks after that. On New Year’s Day, demonstrators returned to the streets in full force in a protest that started peacefully but descended into violent clashes with police.

Pausing for a Pandemic

Early this year, after the coronavirus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan and spread around the world, the protests eased as residents stayed home and social distancing rules were imposed. But demonstrators pressured the government in other ways, notably through a union of hospital employees that went on strike to force the government to slow travel from mainland China to lessen the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

Facing New Scrutiny

Lunchtime rallies reemerged this spring, though on a much smaller scale than the protests by office workers and others that brought traffic to a halt in key business districts last year. Last month, protesters took to the streets to vent their anger over Beijing’s plan to impose new national security laws and a bill in front of the local legislature that would ban the disrespect of China’s national anthem. Police, who have taken a more aggressive approach to clamping down on protests after a new commissioner was installed last year, arrested at least 180 people.

Defying a Ban

Hong Kong has long hosted the only large-scale remembrance on Chinese soil of the Chinese military’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters around Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989. Last year, in a reflection of the growing concern in the city over the proposed extradition law, organisers said more than 180,000 people attended the vigil. This year, police banned the event for the first time in 30 years, citing the epidemic risk, but thousands of people defied authorities and gathered in districts across the city.

One Year of Protests

On Tuesday evening, a few thousand people, some still in their office clothes, marched through downtown Hong Kong, holding up the lights of their cellphones and chanting protest slogans like, “Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!”

c.2020 The New York Times Company