Benedict Rogers: #save12hkyouths

Just over a week ago, Joey Siu and I launched a new campaign on social media, with a very simple message: #save12hkyouths.

The idea was to encourage people to write the hashtag on a piece of paper, take a photograph and post, tagging three friends. The aim was to create a snowball and to shine a spotlight on the 12 brave young Hong Kongers in jail in China, to demand their release and return to Hong Kong or, failing that, access to medical care, legal representation of their choice and family contact.

The hashtag of course was not new – it already existed – but the idea of a worldwide campaign for the 12 was. Within days politicians and public figures from across the spectrum and around the world had joined in, from prominent Hong Kong activists such as Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Ray Wong, to Swedish climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg, exiled Chinese artist Badiucao and British radio show host Maajid Nawaz, from the former leader of the British Conservative Party Iain Duncan Smith MP to senior Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael MP and independent peer Lord Alton, from Australian Labour Party Senator Kimberley Kitching to Slovakian Member of the European Parliament Miriam Lexmann and United States Congressmen Ted Yoho and John Curtis. Politicians and activists from Denmark, Italy, Germany and France also joined in, along with Uyghurs and Tibetans.

Perhaps two of the most poignant and apposite supporters were Hong Kong’s Alexandra – or “Grandma” – Wong, and Angela Gui.

Grandma Wong, the 64 year-old who was a regular and much-loved protester in Hong Kong last year, famous for waving the Union Jack, returned to the city earlier this month after her disappearance in August last year.

A week ago she made her first public appearance in 14 months, telling media that she had been imprisoned in mainland China, initially for 45 days without charge in Shenzhen.

According to news reports, she was held in a 200 square foot cell with up to 26 other prisoners, and faced interrogation almost every day. At the end of 45 days she was forced to make a confession, promise not to engage in any more demonstrations or talk to the media, and required to declare on camera that she had not been tortured. She was also forced to renounce her activism in writing. “I was afraid I would die in that detention centre,” she said.

After her ordeal in detention in Shenzhen, Grandma Wong says she was taken on a five-day “patriotic education” tour of Shaanxi province in north-east China, where she was required to sing the national anthem and stand before the Chinese flag. Finally, Grandma Wong was released on bail pending trial for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, returned to Shenzhen under house arrest and was forbidden from visiting Hong Kong until now.

Yet among the very first things this courageous woman did after her return to Hong Kong was to appeal for the release of the 12 Hong Kongers now in a Shenzhen jail. Holding up a piece of paper with the #save12hkyouths hashtag written on it, she told a press conference: “I won’t give up fighting. After all, there will be sacrifice, otherwise ... the authoritarian system wouldn’t be changed.”

Angela Gui could have been forgiven for focusing on her own father’s plight, but she too joined the campaign to save the 12.

Despite marking the fifth anniversary last Saturday of the abduction of her father, former Hong Kong-based publisher Gui Minhai, from Thailand, Ms Gui tweeted a photograph of herself with the hashtag written on a notepad. Her father, a Chinese-born Swedish national, is now serving a ten-year prison sentence in China, and Ms Gui has fought a courageous campaign for his release.

Both Grandma Wong and Angela Gui know better than most of us what the 12 Hong Kongers in jail in Shenzhen must be enduring – and the dangers they face in speaking out. That makes their support all the more powerful.

Earlier this week I tweeted a message which read: “We gained support from senior politicians from across the spectrum and around the world. Now I say to the Chinese government - Free the 12!” Tagging the Chinese ambassadors to the United States and the UN, and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I asked them: “@AmbCuiTiankai, @ChinaAmbUN @MFA_China – what do you say?” The Foreign Ministry and the ambassador in Washington, DC have so far not responded, and the Chinese ambassador to the UN blocked me on Twitter.

Tomorrow around the world demonstrations will be held as part of a global campaign of solidarity with the 12. I will speak at a rally in London, alongside my friends Nathan Law and Luke de Pulford, and I know there will be similar protests in many other cities.

As we campaign tomorrow for the 12, let us not forget Gui, a foreign citizen abducted from a third country and now jailed in China. Let’s also remember all prisoners of conscience in Chinese jails. And let us be inspired by Grandma Wong’s determination not to give up fighting. If, having been through her ordeal, she can find the strength to return to Hong Kong and speak out as she has, then everyone around the world who enjoys freedom can at least use that freedom to raise the loudest voice possible and shine the brightest light conceivable for the 12.

Earlier this week my colleague Luke de Pulford, a Fellow of Hong Kong Watch, released a video he made about the life of one of the 12 – the courageous activist Andy Li – which ends with these words: “His only crime was to campaign for what Hong Kong was promised.”

To honour Andy, we must not only seek the release and well-being of all the 12 – which we must – but also work for the day when his actions are lauded not criminalised, and Hong Kong receives the freedoms it was promised.

Benedict Rogers is co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch. This article was published in Apple Daily on 23 October 2020. (Photo: Apple Daily)