36C3 - What the World can learn from Hongkong

36C3 preroll music

Herald: Our next talk is going to be
translated into German and possibly into

French. So there is a link you can all go
to. It's streaming.c3lingo.org. You can go

there for translations and we're about to
start the talk called "What the world can

learn from Hong Kong" and it's going to
take 90 minutes because apparently we can

learn a lot from Hong Kong. So buckle up.
It's going to be a long ride. And our

speaker Katharin Tai is a University of
Oxford alumni and a PhD candidate at

M.I.T.. So let's welcome Katharin on
stage.

Let's give her a big round of applause.

Applause

All yours.
Katharin Tai: Thank you. Hello, everyone.

Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me to
C3. For starters, I'd also like to thank

the brave people who are planning to
translate what I'm about to say, despite

knowing how fast I usually speak. So quick
round of applause for the translators over

there in the boxes.
applause

So my name's Katharin. As the dear Harald,
I actually don't know your name

mentioned, I'm a PhD student at
M.I.T. where I study Political Science. I

also work as a freelance journalist on the
side and in my capacity as a freelance

journalist I, amongst other things,
covered the Hong Kong protests over the

past seven months which as you can
possibly imagine was quite eventful. I

think one important caveat for this talk
is I am not originally from Hong Kong and

I think the people who you should probably
listening to and who I would love to put

on the stage in many cases are people who
go to great lengths to protect their own

anonymity and to protect their own
identity. And so these are people who

would not put themselves on the stage. So
what I'm going to try to do is I'm going

to tell you to the best of my ability the
things that I've learned from them and

from the people who go out on the streets
and protest in Hong Kong but in general,

my talk will be interspersed with
references to journalists and some

activists in Hong Kong who I recommend you
follow them because ultimately they are

the ones who know best. But what do I want
to do? For starters, because this is 90

minutes, so I want to give you a quick
heads up. I'm going to give a quick

overview of why and how things are
happening, so historically and politically

and we will also be showcasing some
amazing protest art. And then I want to

talk about the incredible strategies that
protesters have been using and that

they've been using for over half a year
now and that's helped them to essentially

keep going for more than half a year in
the face of what is truly an incredibly

strong government. So also, we want to
talk about technology because, of course,

it's C3. So it's incredibly important that
we recognize the very high tech things

that the protesters have been using to
defend themselves against the police, such

as catapults.
Short video starts playing

Group shouting
K: This was recently at the Chinese

University of Hong Kong but there are more
catapults. But seriously, like I said, I'm

going to start with some historical
political background and then I'm going to

move on and explain the political demands
and the protest strategies that the

protesters have been using and in the end,
I'm going to give kind of like a bit like

a quick preview of what we can maybe
expect to happen in the next few years and

what you can do to stay informed. So what
is happening and why? Can I have light on

the audience for a second? I don't know
who I talk to about this. Great. So I want

to know, I want to get a quick sense of
how much people know about Hong Kong's

politics. So if you know why the years
1997 and 2047 are meaningful for Hong Kong

politics, please raise your hand. Wow.
Thank you. That's definitely more than I

expected. I hope this won't bore you then.
Thanks for the lights, that's fine,

although I actually like seeing the
audience, that's quite good. I'm still

going to give a quick overview. Some of
you may know that Hong Kong was a British

colony until 1997. So it was under British
colonial rule for more than 100 years.

Once the British lease of Hong Kong was
up, the British negotiated an agreement

with the Chinese government to return Hong
Kong to China. Ironically, this event was

called the Handover, where Hong Kong was
literally taken by a colonial power and

handed over to a different government.
Ironically also it is that it's called the

return to China because the current
Chinese government was not even in power

when Hong Kong was last part of what you
could consider China. But at this Handover

event or before this Handover event, the
British and the Chinese signed an

important document, which was the Sino-
British Joint Declaration, which says

that... which essentially says the rights
and freedoms, including those of the

person, of speech, of the press, of
assembly, of academic research and of

religious belief will be ensured by law in
the Hong Kong Special Administrative

Region. Why are they writing something
like this? Hong Kong was a colony but

because it was essentially used as a big
and important commercial center, it did

have a lot of kind of like societal
freedoms. So people were able to protest

to the extent that colonial law allowed
it. And there was, for example, freedom of

the press and there were worries in the UK
and also in Hong Kong, a lot of Hong

Kongers were extremely worried about this,
about what might happen to these freedoms,

when they would essentially go become part
of China, which is not democratic. It's

not a democracy. It wasn't a democracy in
the 80s or the 90s either. This is

something like... these anxieties were
obviously exacerbated by the fact that in

89, the Chinese government suppressed a
student protest in Tiananmen Square. Hong

Kongers knew about this. And so they were
watching from just across the border and

they were looking at the students in
Tiananmen and Beijing. And they were

wondering, is this going to be us next?
This whole thing, this whole idea that

Hong Kong's freedom will be guaranteed is
called One Country, Two Systems. And so

the idea is that Hong Kong gets to
maintain its own government in some ways.

It gets to maintain its own legal system
and it gets to maintain all these

political freedoms that in many ways are
not guaranteed in mainland China. In

addition to that, Hong Kong does not have
democracy in the sense that most people

understand it. But the Hong Kong basic law
says that the ultimate aim is the

selection of the chief executive, which is
the head of government in Hong Kong, by

universal suffrage, upon nomination, by a
broadly representative nominating

committee in accordance with democratic
procedures. So basically this could be

read as there will also be democracy at
some point, maybe. Depending on how we

define all of these terms. So in 97, the
Chinese government decided that what Hong

Kong is going to get is essentially a
government that is basically appointed by

Beijing. There's... it's a bit more
complicated, but essentially the Hong Kong

chief executive is appointed in Beijing
and people get to vote for their

parliament, but the parliament doesn't
really have... they can't come up

with the laws and say we want to pass this
law so they can essentially veto bills

that come from the government. But Hong
Kongers basically get to elect their

opposition in free and fair elections. Or
part of their opposition. But they do not

get to elect their government. So that's
where we're starting in 97. So I think

this is important to understand because
while Hong Kong is part of China legally,

it has a special status that makes it very
different politically. And that's

something that became very obvious in the
years following the handover as well.

Antony Dapiran, a lawyer who works in
Hong Kong, has called the city a city of

protest. And you can see this, for
example, because since the Handover there

has been a range of protests, all of them
have been political and a lot of them have

been in some ways related to China. These
are just some examples. One was in 2003,

the protest against Article 23, which was
an anti-subversion law. So basically it

was an anti-... So it was basically seen
as a way for the government to get rid of

people who they disagreed with
politically. People protested against it.

And the reform was stalled. In 2012, a lot
of students protested against a curriculum

reform that people essentially denounced
as brainwashing. They said it would be

painting democracy in a bad light and was
painting China as too positive. Again, the

protest succeeded. There were a range of
other protests as well in the 2000s that,

for example, protested for maintaining
important buildings, what people called

Hong Kong heritage. A lot of those
unfortunately failed. So there's been ups

and downs. But it's in no way the case
that Hong Kong wasn't free. People were

able to go out on the streets, people went
out on the streets in thousands and people

had political rallies such as out of
university, as you see in the picture in

the background. And then 2014 happened.
I'm sure people have seen this. This was

the Umbrella Revolution in 2014. I took
this picture when I was actually at Occupy

Central and I studied for my own mid-term
exams at the Student Study Center. What

had happened was that the promise of maybe
democracy that I was talking about

earlier, people thought that Beijing had
broken it because in that year, Beijing

had essentially published it's plan for
electoral reform and said that, yes, you

get universal suffrage, so everyone gets
to vote, but we still pick the candidates.

So people felt cheated and didn't think
that that was what they were owed. And

people went into the streets and people
occupied a part of the center of the city

for two full months and two full weeks,
which was extremely impressive. This is

basically one of the major roads in the
middle of Hong Kong. It's usually full of

cars. You couldn't possibly walk there,
but people reclaimed it and made it into a

protest village. People built their own
institutions. People organized tutoring

services. It was an incredible feeling.
People, when there were there, were

incredibly optimistic and were telling me
it will be fine. We just need to work

together. And if I asked them, how are you
going to get democracy, though? They were

like, I don't know how exactly it's going
to happen, but it will happen. But what

actually happened is that the protest camp
was cleared out by police and by the

government and there were fights
internally in the democracy movement over

how to continue. And so there was a lot of
disagreement. And what followed was

essentially a long period of political
depression, right? People had been able to

bring thousands of people onto the
streets, but the government didn't even...

except for one conversation, sit down and
negotiate with them. One person who I

interviewed last year, so almost two years
ago now, told me at the time that if the

government doesn't even listen to us when
we bring so many people out on the

streets, then I don't know what can change
anything politically. The one thing that

umbrella has taught me is that there are
no bounds to how disappointed I can be in

my government. In addition to this feeling
of depression, you had several other

incidents that made people feel like the
promise of One Country, Two Systems, that

Hong Kong would really be separate from
mainland China at least until 47 wasn't

being kept. One of these examples are the
bookseller abductions from 2015. The

people, there were 3 booksellers who were
abducted, probably by the Chinese

government, one in Thailand, one in
southern China and one in Hong Kong

itself. So these are people who were
essentially selling books that were,

honestly, a lot of it was probably rumors
and kind of gossip, but they were very

critical of the Chinese government and
they suddenly turned up in China again. So

imagine you're a Hong Konger and you've
grown up in a city where you're being

told you have your own legal system and
you have nothing to fear from

China. Because if you don't go, it's your
own government that is in charge for you.

But then you hear about these people who
are grabbed off the street in your own

hometown and who suddenly turn up in
China, possibly making a public

confession. So that looks bad. In 2016,
this is also important, people had been...

the Fishbowl Revolution happened, which is
also where this beautiful piece of art

comes from. The Fishbowl Revolution was
the protest in part of Hong Kong called

Mong Kok. And basically what happened was
that people decided that violent means

might be what is needed to actually oppose
the government to get political change. In

2014, people had been peaceful and they
had tried, but nobody listened. So if that

doesn't work, some people thought
we need to try new methods. So there

was something that could be called a
riot. And there were really... like

clashes between the... like between police
forces and protesters. People were tearing

up the pavement, throwing bricks at the
police. Police was throwing some bricks

back. So that happened. And then
from between 2016 and 18, another

thing that was important happened, which
is that after Umbrella, there were fights

about what to do. And some people decided
we will go and throw bricks at the police

during the Fishbowl Revolution. Some other
people decided we want to work through the

institutions and we want to get elected
into the legislative council, into the

parliament, and we want to change the
system from within. But what happened was

that 6 candidates, and then later even 6
elected parliamentarians were all

disqualified for, in some cases not
credibly promising that they essentially

will uphold the Hong Kong basic law.
Again, there are legal reasons for this.

Some of these disqualifications were later
overturned by courts. Some, I think, are

still, still stand. But I think what's
really important is that what a lot of

people felt was, again, that this was kind
of like a broken promise. Right. They were

like even within the system that we have.
So we get to elect so few people. But even

within that system, you don't let us elect
the people we want to. You disqualify

candidates. This is something that had
never happened before. And then you also

disqualify people after they've been
elected. So you have democratically

elected representatives of the people who
essentially protest it as part of an oath

taking ceremony. And those people then
also got kicked out. So that looks bad.

This means if you're, I'm not going to
date myself, but if you're my age and

you're a Hong Konger, you first lived
under British colonialism. Where the

British colonial government was in charge
of your feet. And then post 97, you were

just kind of like handed over to the
Chinese government. Maybe at the age of

like 4, 5, 6, depending on how old you
were. But at no point did you actually get

a choice. But you also grew up with a lot
more political freedom than a lot of

people in mainland China. You had no
Internet censorship and people in Hong

Kong talk very openly about a lot of
things that the Chinese government has

done. And so you're very aware of things
such as the Tiananmen massacre and you're

afraid that those things might maybe
happen to you in 47, when you know there's

an expiration date on all the freedoms
that you have. But in 47, you might also

be part of that and those things might
also be what happens to you. But at the

same time, what you'd also seen is that
you'd seen freedoms eroded and you saw all

these signs that made you think that the
promises, the promise of those 50 years of

freedom and of a separate political
system, that that was an empty promise and

that China was not intending to keep it.
And this, I think, is also really

important that a lot of people who I spoke
to that tell me China doesn't want 1

country, 2 systems. And if they don't want
it, they will undermine it if they can. So

one person who I spoke to is in his 20s
said China just wants one country, one

system, and it's going to do whatever it
wants to achieve that. And that's the

mindset, I think, that we need to
understand to know why people are going

out on the streets right now. So people
are scared of China. People think, people

don't trust the Chinese legal system. And
what happens in 2019 is that the

government introduces an extradition bill.
Previously, one of the ways the Hong Kong

legal system was kept separate from China
is that it couldn't extradite people to

China. So if someone commits a crime in
China and flees to Hong Kong, the Hong

Kong government cannot send that person to
China for prosecution. But what happened

is that someone committed a crime in
Taiwan, which Hong Kong considers to be

part of China. And that person. So this
person was a Hong Kong citizen. He killed

his girlfriend and fled to Hong Kong, was
convicted of a couple of credit card fraud

charges. But because the Hong Kong courts
didn't have jurisdiction, they couldn't

actually get him for the murder of his
girlfriend. And so the Hong Kong

government said, okay, look, we're going
to get an extradition bill so we can start

extraditing people to Taiwan, including,
and then also start extraditing people to

China. I mean, what do you think people
thought about that? They weren't happy. So

on June 9th, one million people,
estimated, went on the street to protest

against the extradition bill. And this is
where we're starting, right? This is where

the political movement starts. I want to
give you an overview of what's happened

over the past 7 months, because it's easy
in hindsight to forget just the scale of a

lot of what happened. So on June 9th we
get, official numbers are 240000. So

that's the police. The organizers say 1
million people. On June 12th, we get 40000

people who essentially gather around the
government headquarter and prevent the

bill from being read a second time, from
being discussed. And the police used tear

gas, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds
against protesters that were largely

unarmed and in some cases held umbrellas
to essentially defend themselves. People

were really mad at that and so on June
16th, the largest protest march in Hong

Kong history happened with an estimated of
2 million people, which is a sizable

proportion of the city's population. So
people are protesting on July 21st. I

think this is one of the events that
people really need to know about. Well,

there was a protest in the center of Hong
Kong in a metro station further north in

Yuen Long. Suddenly, a group of 20, 25 men
in white t-shirts turned up and started

beating people. So just started
indiscriminately beating people up who

were on the metro. We all know this
because there was a journalist in the same

metro station and she was live streaming
the entire thing. So for 40 minutes, she

was live streaming violence that people in
Hong Kong had never really seen before.

People are used to being relatively safe.
Hong Kong has a pretty low crime rate. And

there was this incredibly vicious violence
they were all seeing on their screens. So

everyone knew this. Like at some point
there were thousands, tens of thousands of

people in this live stream. And yet the
police was doing nothing. And it didn't

turn up until after these people had
disappeared. And I think within that day

they may be arrested. I think within a
couple of days they didn't arrest anyone.

And then later they arrested 3 people. But
so far, nothing has come of that. That was

really a turning point where people lost a
lot of trust in institutions that they

used to have before because they decided
that ultimately when in doubt, if there's

some gangster beating me up, if the person
is politically for the government, I

cannot trust the police to come and save
me. And a lot of people, especially

wealthier, more well-off, middle class
people, that's the point when they change

their mind. Maybe before they said the
extradition bill isn't that bad, I don't

mind, it will be fine. But that was the
moment when they saw those people getting

beaten up. They looked at them and they
were like, that could have been me. And

that's when they said, now something needs
to happen and something needs to be done

about this government. So more people go
out in the pouring rain. An estimated 1.7

million people protesting. August 31 the
estimate is tens of thousands, but this

was an illegal march, so the protest
wasn't allowed. So people went out to

protest despite it being illegal. They
knew they could be charged with like

illegal assembly. Maybe a riot which
carries up to 10 years. After that, the

government essentially stopped allowing
protest marches and they were like, maybe

if we don't allow you to protest, people
won't come out to protest. Didn't work out

on October 1st, Chinese National Day,
thousands demonstrated on the streets

again. And this is the first day someone
was shot with a life round. So a protester

in his 20s was shot by a policeman at
close range. On October 4th, again,

thousands of people out in the streets.
The government tries to ban masks, so they

went to prevent people from hiding their
faces. And you see what people do in

reaction to that. They put on masks and they
go out and protest because it's Hong Kong

On November 8th, the first person died
in the context of the protests. A young

man who fell from a building near a police
action saved and in a coma for several

days and then died on November 8th.
This picture is from one of the vigils

for him. And several days later, the
second person died in the context of the

protest, an old man who was probably just
a bystander at a clash between police and

protesters. He was hit in his face, in
the head by a brick and died several days

later. Also after a coma. This was what
set off the most extreme and the most

violent days of protests in Hong Kong that
we have seen this year and possibly ever.

Where people started occupying university
campuses and had real battles with police

to essentially defend those campuses
against police. And the whole thing

culminated on November 18th in police
essentially laying siege to an entire

university, trapping people inside and
thousands of people going out to protest

and trying to essentially break through
the police cordon from the outside and

rescue the people who were inside, who
were afraid of the police, who didn't want

to come up because they'd seen videos of
police violence over the past few months

and they were scared because they said, I
don't know what's going to happen if I go

out, but who also said we have fought for
so many months at this point. So this was

November, right? So a month ago, they were
saying we have fought it for so many

months, we cannot just give up. We need to
at least try. One thing that happened as

part of that was that people coordinate an
absolutely insane exit from the besieged

university where they basically came down
from a footbridge. Some of these people

are climbing, but some of them are just
falling down. And then you have

motorcyclists waiting for them down the
bridge. All of this is coordinated online.

And we don't know how many people are
going out that way, but maybe 50 or 100

men were able to escape arrest.

Video playing, human voices,
photo shutters, motorcycle noises

It's kind of like getting down and being
picked up by motorbikes. The sieges

eventually ended. Kind of a lot of people
were arrested. I think more than a

thousand people were arrested around the
university that was occupied. But several

days later, there were district council
elections, which are basically local

elections in Hong Kong and this was the
electoral map before the elections. Red are

pro-government parties and yellow are pro-
democracy parties. There was a record

turnout, the highest ever in the history
of Hong Kong. And the pro-democracy camp

made the map to this.
applause

One thing that's important to bear in mind
is that Hong Kong uses the first-past-the-

post system. So you win in your district
if you gain an absolute majority. So these

seats actually don't translate into that
much of a electoral difference. So I think

it was 60/40. So with 60% for pro-
democracy, but especially compared to what

the districts had looked like before, this
was an incredible achievement and I also

think this is one thing that's really
important, recognize that there's a lot of

organizational work that went through
this. So people put in a lot of time, no

love like work to make sure that people
went out and would be able to vote and the

people knew who they were voting for. So
here we are in December. By the count of

the activist and writer Kong Tsung-gan
there have been 6152 arrests, at least,

possibly more. 921 people have been
prosecuted. So there's an incredible

backlog and there have been 774 protests
that includes smaller ones. That was as of

December 23. Since then, there have been
several more hundred arrests. So we're

probably getting closer, much closer to
6500, 6600. And that's where we are after

7 months of protest in Hong Kong.
This is somewhat depressing, but it's also

incredibly impressive that people have
been able to keep going for such a long

time. These people who are going out into
the streets are not just walking for half

an hour or an hour and then go home and
are like, oh, yeah, no, it's fine. People

are entering real battles with police and
essentially running and hiding from police

for, in some cases for hours. A lot of
people have been driven to physical

exhaustion. A lot of people aren't doing
well mentally because that's incredibly

depressing. There's a lot of anxiety.
People are very scared of what could

happen to them if they do get arrested.
And so one thing that I want to now focus

on is how they've been able to just keep
this going for such a long time. Hong Kong

is such a tiny place. And if you look at
the resources that the Chinese government

has access to, that the Hong Kong
government has access to. How can a

protest keep going for so long? I think I
have a few answers. The first answer is

that they are very clear demands that the
movement has. The first is a complete

withdrawal of the extradition bill. So the
blog that I was talking about earlier that

was fulfilled in September. The second is
the release of arrested protesters without

chargers. So they're saying we want all
those 6..., more than 6000 people, those

should be released and they should be able
to go home without being charged because

they were trying to make their government
listen to them because there is no other

way you can get your government to listen
to you if you cannot vote. The only thing

you can do is you can go out on the
street. The third demand is the withdrawal

of the characterization of protests as a
right of old. Any protest is a riot. This

is a bit technical, but the basic gist of
it is that there is a law that the British

colonial administration introduced which
allows police to classify a lot of

protests as riots. It's like a pretty
broad definition. It's pretty vague. And

that if you're convicted of rioting, that
carries up to 10 years in prison. So I

think roughly a third of arrested
protesters has been under 18. Imagine you

are 14 years old and you're out in the
streets and you find out that you could be

charged with rioting and you're looking at
a 10 year prison sentence. Let's... That's

very scary. The first demand. Which is one
of the ones that has some of the most

support in the population. Currently at 72
percent as of December 8th is an

independent investigation to police
brutality because people don't trust the

government watchdog. That is essentially
staffed by people who the government gets

to pick. And they have has been. There
were a few international experts on that

panel, but all of them resigned because
they said this is actually a joke and we

don't think we can actually do anything
meaningful about this. So people want an

independent investigation. I specifically
did not include images of protest

brutality in my presentation. But if you
think you can take the violence, I would

urge you to actually go look them up.
There's a lot of material online. Hong

Kong Free Press has documented a lot of
these cases and reports on the legal

follow up on them as well. This has not
been good. And I think it's also something

that the violence was especially
disproportionate and shocking for people

because people are used to being safe.
People are not used to living in a country

where the police just comes and beats them
up or where the police just put like

stomps their foot on the head of an
arrested protester who's already lying on

the ground. They're not used to like
watching police kicks, like just kick

someone who's already on the ground.
They're also don't, ... they're also not

used to, ... they're also not used to
police arresting teenagers. So, yeah,

that's number four. And number five is
real universal sufefrage. This is currently

at 70 percent support in the broader
population. So the idea is, essentially,

people say, we want that democracy that
promised, if you meet us in 97 or what we

think you..., like that promise that we
think you made us. We want that. And this

is also something that has been
strengthened, especially over the past few

months, because until a year ago, maybe
people thought it doesn't matter that much

if I elect the government because things
will be fine and most people are competent

who are in government. But if the past
seven months they've been watching a

government that essentially refused to
listen to any of the protesters and

pretended like that none of their demands
were in any way politically legitimate. So

now people like... now a lot of people who
are fired a year ago saying, well, now we

need democracy because we've seen what
happens if you have a government that

doesn't represent the people it's supposed
to represent. I think this is an important

strategy because it means that everyone
who goes out, knows what they're

protesting for. So since July, people have
been going out on the streets and they

say: These are the five things we want.
This is what we want. Nothing else.

Notably, independence is not part of this
list, although the Chinese government

likes to say that the protesters are
separatists. Independence is not a demand

of the movement and also has pretty low
support in Hong Kong. But instead, because

you have these five demands, it's very
catchy. People have even come up with the

protest slogan..., with a protest sign.
Right? So whenever you see pictures of

protest, you will see people just holding
up their hands like this because they're

like five demands. And then they put up
another thing and they're saying not one

less. So that's one guiding slogan that
they've been using. And it's been memed.

Everything gets memed in the Hong Kong
protests. So, for example, if you're

disappointed with the new Star Wars movie,
go to Hong Kong, because there's a lot of

very entertaining Star Wars content that
includes protesters. So on the left, you

can see at the bottom again, it says five
demands, not one less. And the image on

the right also has that in Chinese.
Strategy number two. Be water. This is an

image by an artist,... that
essentially,... so you've seen some of the

images where people cover their faces to
protect themselves against tear gas. They

protect themselves so they can't be
identified. And so there was a week when

people started drawing the Pokemons of the
Hong Kong protests. And this was an image

for be water. Be water has essentially
been a guiding principle of the movement

since the very beginning. And it's based
on a Bruce Lee quote. He's a martial

artist. He was in a bunch of like kung fu
films from Hong Kong. And he said, empty

your mind, be formless, shapeless, like
water. Now you put water in a cup. It

becomes the cup. You put water in a
bottle. It becomes the bottle. You put it

in a teapot. It becomes the teapot. Now
water can flow or it can crash. So the

idea of be water is that you essentially
accumulate and gather people in places

unexpectedly and very quickly and in the
end you disappear as quickly as possible.

There were scenes where protests of
thousands in the center of Hong Kong just

kind of like dissipated and disappeared
into nothingness. This is how you can

avoid police capture in many cases. Right.
Like you don't sit and you don't stay in a

place like people did with Occupy Central
in 2014. You leave once the police turns

up, but you don't even have to wait for
the police to show up to know that they're

coming. Because what people have started
doing is that essentially you get maps

where they have,... or you have scouting
channels first, where people, when they

see police, they just submit a report to
the,... like to the telegram channel. So

there are bots where you can submit
reports. You say, I've seen a police unit.

It's going from here to this place. That
direction, this many policemen. And that

gets posted on a telegram channel with a
hashtag for the location that there were

seen in. One person who I interviewed,
who's middle class, doing really well. I

asked him what the protest changed about
him. And he said it really changed my

frame of mind because now I got used to
observing the deployment of police

whenever I see it. I got alerted to a
siren and once I see it, I will

immediately send the info onto a telegram
channel. These reports then also get

turned into maps. So this was Christmas
Eve in Hong Kong. So people got a white

Christmas, not because there was snow, but
because there was a lot of tear gas. And

the reports that people sent in are
essentially turned into a map that you can

use to strategically avoid being captured
by police. And also that, for example,

some relatives of mine wanted to go to
Hong Kong and they said, well, we are

worried about going into areas of protest.
And I was like, well, you can use this map

and you can avoid. You can see really
easily in which, ... into which areas you

really shouldn't go. And basically, if
there are a lot of icons in the place,

that means a lot of stuff is happening
there. If there are ..., if you have like

the puppy logo, that means police units,
cars means police cars. You see some water

drops kind of like in the middle towards
the left. That means there's a water

cannon right there that you probably want
to avoid. And there's also different signs

for the different police units. So they're
Raptors. And those are predators, the

dinosaur logos. And in addition to that,
you kind of have the, you know, at what

time the report was submitted, you can
verify a report you see further down

towards the lower part of the map. There's
a camera sign. And so that means that

there are life feeds from that place. So
if you want to know what's going on at a

particular place, a lot of Hong Kong
journalists are live streaming the

protests. And so you can go and just watch
a livestream to see what's really

happening on the ground. Right like there.
And there's even a Web site that compiles

up to nine live streams at the same time.
So you can just watch all of them at the

same time on your screen to make sure you
know what's happening. These maps are

extremely useful. And there is no way of
saying how many people they've helped in

avoiding arrest. But one friend of mine
who was talking to another protester in

July said, that he was going home from a
protest, and he was wearing the

distinctive black shirts that protesters
usually wear. He didn't have any change of

clothes and he wanted to avoid arrest. And
he told his friends. And so within a few

minutes, they sent him a screenshot of
Google Maps where you could just see where

they'd just shown him, this is your escape
route. Just going around all the police

units that they could see on the map,
using only open sourced, crowd sourced

information that was all made freely
available online and that people put on

maps like this. Applause I think it's
worth clapping for, like because these are

people's lives, right? If there are only
10 people that got to escape police arrest

because of these things, we don't know to
how many years those people could be sent

to the prison. They could just be sent its
defiance. Maybe they could send us to

prison in three years. But all of that is
time. All of that is time in people's

lives and the lives of people who have
been going out to protest and all of that

was saved thanks to people crowdsourcing
and open sourcing all of this information.

And that's an incredible effort that
people have been making for months now and

an incredibly important institution that
really has helped people. The next part of

be water is decentralized decision making.
One of the reasons I talked about the

history of Hong Kong protests before and
all of that political stuff is because I

think it's very important to understand
where people are coming from. People of

all ages are protesting. But it's really
young people who are disproportionally

against the government and against the
bill. I think especially, ... I think

earlier in June or July, the numbers were
that 59 percent of people under 16 oppose

the extradition bill. That's almost 100
percent amongst people who are not even

eligible to vote. Not even close to being
eligible to vote. But these people have

also been protesting for a very long time,
and they've also learned from the past.

One thing that they've learned from 2014
is that you if you're a leader, you get

arrested and you get put in prison. Joshua
Wong, who you may have heard of, is one of

the people who that happened to him.
Another person who that happened to his

Edward Lung, who was a leading figure of
the fishbowl riots of 2016. He's currently

still serving time in prison. But how do
you organize a movement without having

political leaders? You well, you do the
whole crowd intelligence thing. Right.

Like you start having grassroots decision
making, you have a leaderless movement.

Hong Kong is not the first time this has
happened. The Gezi protests in Istanbul in

2013 were doing something similar. And now
it's happening on Hong Kong. So you

have,... if you have no leaders, you have
nobody who the government can arrest to

cripple the movement. They can maybe
arrest one person. They can arrest a

hundred people. They can arrest 6000
people. But all of those people are only

drops in the bigger movement and in that
wave that we were talking about earlier.

So how does political decision making work
if you have thousands of people? So there

are telegram groups primarily and there
there's also a forum called LIHGK. That's

a bit like reddit. And then people just
have political discussions on those. In

addition to that, people often have groups
on whatsup. People have Facebook groups

like my parents are like probably not on
telegram, but kind of like the equivalent

of the children. Their generation has
groups on Facebook. And that's where

people are talking about what they think
should happen, about strategic questions,

about questions in terms of what their
aims should be. And so it's just kind of

happening on all these platforms. And so
if you have an idea or if you have an

argument that you think is important, you
share it. And if people agree with you,

they start sharing it further on. So
decision making is kind of like,... has

like a snowball effect where you can see
once you are in different groups like

arguments that people agree with keep
reappearing, like in 10, 15, 20 groups or

people start rephrasing them. And so
that's how we kind of like consensus is

often being built. At the same time, if
you want to,... if you have an idea for a

really cool protest action such as you
want people to form a human chain across

part of Hong Kong, which is something that
they did and someone just came up with it

and posted about it online and then
someone made a poster for it and more

people made posters and lots of people
said this is a great idea. And so they

just did it. I hope that especially
hackers can empathize with this idea that

someone has a cool idea, just does it. And
then people recognize that it is cool and

kind of go along with it. And that's how a
lot of the movement has been working for

the past few months as well. Another
example of this is the December 1st

protest where thousands of people came out
because someone, just like basically the

equivalent of a Reddit user in his 20s had
just said, "well, I thought we should try

to have a protest again." And all of a
sudden the government actually gave him

permission. And there were thousands of
people, again, out on the streets because

anyone can register protest. One thing
that's hard is decision-making. Some of

these groups have thousands of people. I
think I'm in several telegram groups that

have maybe 60-70 thousand members. So
often people use polling to essentially

make decisions. I don't know whether you
know the poll function of telegram?

Basically, the admins can send in a poll
and say these are your four options. Do

you think we should do A, B, C, or D and
then just, kind of, vote. And that's how a

lot of the -- especially -- decision
making and discussion on demands or

deadlines that people were trying to set
was happening earlier in the movement. But

it's also something that people can use if
they need to make strategic decisions

quickly on the spot. On August 12th,
people occupied the Hong Kong airport,

which is an incredibly important
international hub, and where they managed

to paralyze the entire airport. The Hong
Kong government announced that day that

flights would stop taking off at 4 p.m.
and there started being rumors that the

police would essentially come in and start
clearing out the airport violently with

tear gas. And police was deploying
increasingly more people towards the

airport. Because you have all these
telegram channels, you see that people

take pictures of police. They post them
and you see, "Oh, my God, all this police

is coming towards the airport, I am here.
They cut off the metro. So you cannot take

the train back into the city. The Hong
Kong airport is on an island. You cannot

get away from there." And so there was a
lot of heated discussion back and forth

that day. And people were discussing, "Is
it safe?" "Is it not safe?" And

ultimately, there was one channel that
had, I think, 60000 followers and the

admins kept asking, should we stay or
shall we go? And the ratios kept

changing towards leaving. And then
suddenly it was 70 to 30 percent. And

people were like, OK, this is it, we're
leaving. And that was kind of the moment

when you could see people changing their
mind, right on the spot. There was nobody

who said, "We're now leaving," not a
single person who said "We're now going

back." But just thousands of people who
were watching and who said, "This looks

too dangerous. We need to stay safe and we
need to go home." The result of that was a

mass exodus where people literally walked
for hours, as you can see on this picture,

just across streets. Because, buses were
full and stopped running, The metro had

stopped running, but they needed to get
back home. One of the funniest things I

think that I've heard of as part of the be
water and grassroots discussion strategy;

I was talking to Chiffon Young, who's the
China correspondent for the German paper,

Die Zeit and she was reporting from a
small group that was building street

blockades in Hong Kong. And there they
were practicing grassroots decision making

in person. So, they built a blockade. They
hear police is coming, so scouts are

telling them. They leave and they run to
the metro. But then they need to know

where they're going next, because there's
no plan. Because if you have no plan, the

police can't know your plan and can't wait
for you there. But also, you have no plan.

So you have five people, 10 people who are
just shouting at each other on the metro

platform. So one says "We want to go
here," and the other person says "We're

going there." And maybe after five minutes
of shouting, they decide; "OK, we have

reached consensus." Swarm intelligence. laughers
But it works. It's chaotic, but it works

because it really makes it hard to figure
out where people are. Another really hard

thing of this whole grassroots decision
making and bottom up decision making has

been how do you correct course if you make
mistakes? How do you correct those

mistakes, if there's nobody who can tell
someone that they need to stop doing these

things? Again, this was something you
could observe during the airport protests,

where people occupied the entire departure
hall. And at some point -- I think they

said it was a citizen's arrest but -- they
basically tied a person to one of those

luggage carts, who they thought was an
undercover policeman from China, and beat

that person up. I think he was led away in
the end, but it was an incredibly ugly

scene, and when you were watching it, it
felt a lot like mob violence. But what

happened after? A lot of people were
saying, well, "This is a sign that this

whole leaderless movement thing is not
working. And you cannot actually change

anything about your behavior. There's
nobody who can tell these people that they

need to change their mind." But what
happened afterwards is that you saw the

same thing that I was describing earlier.
People saw that this was bad. And people

agreed that that was bad! So people were
going around and everyone kept encouraging

everyone else; "You need to be careful.
Don't use violence. If you think someone

is an undercover cop, who's spying on you,
you can't just beat that person up."

Afterwards, there was one scene where
people ran into someone who they thought

was maybe a cop from mainland China. And
so instead of beating him up, they all

stood around him and started taking selfies
with him. cheerful laughter In addition to that,

increasingly you see people... pushing
people, pulling people back. And so people

are saying, "Well, this is something you
can't do, you can't attack this person."

So if there's a person who's tempers may
be running really high, often there will

be people around the person who say, "No,
we're going to pull you back." People

tried to write guidelines. They said you
need to be careful about journalists.

Don't accuse people of being fake
journalists, all these things. So was a

lot of like self correction and self
control coming out of that moment. I

thought that was really interesting and
really important because was one sign the

course correction can happen even if you
have thousands of people. But it requires

everyone to participate and requires
people to be willing to essentially

interrogate the things that they had done
and also possibly admit mistakes. Strategy

four: anonymity. Again, I think it may be
something that hackers can empathize with.

I know there is, as usual, a lot of talks
about how to maintain your security and

anonymity online. For people in Hong Kong,
this has become incredibly important. The

thing about feeling like your political
system is being eroded and all the

securities and certainties and rights you
had disappearing slowly is that you don't

know, months line has moved, so you don't
blow anymore. A lot of people I've spoken

to don't feel like they can speak
politically anymore so they don't know

what the consequences are going to be.
Instead, what people do is they start

changing their names on their Facebook
accounts, for example, because something

that they would have said openly like a
year ago, they no longer dare to say under

their own name. There are people who've
been fired probably for the things that

they said on Facebook, such as a person
who was a union leader with a Hong Kong

airline, Cathay Pacific. So, anonymity is
enforced both in person and online. Also,

again, through a lot of kind of like
community control and people supporting

each other and essentially enforcing these
rules with each other. Online it's very

much a social rule. So if you're kind of
like in a working group on Telegram and

people are starting to chat kind of about
personal stuff, then usually there will be

someone who tells everyone else, no, get
back to work. Stop talking about that

stuff. You're disclosing too much about
yourself. One phrase that people keep

using is they say there are ghosts. So the
operational assumption is that in any

group, there will be someone who is
listening. So you especially in these

bigger groups who cannot ever assume that
there is no police in there. So you can do

your work, but assume that you're being
watched while you're doing anything that

you're doing. Another thing that they're
doing is that there are several channels

that are dedicated to cybersecurity. And
there is one channel, for example, that

started passing around, kind of like JPEGs
that had instructions for how to

set your telegram settings, because you
need to assume that a lot of the people

who you're working with don't have a lot
of interest necessarily in technology and

maybe have the highest priority going out
to protest. And so it helps that there are

easy rules, Right? So people send around
these instructions that say you toggle

these things on your telegram settings,
make sure that nobody can see your phone

number who isn't already a contact of
yours or you change this thing and that

means that your account essentially self-
destructs if you're inactive for seven

days. And so in many ways, a lot of this
is about the social kind of the social

enforcement and also breaking things down
and making them assess as accessible as

possible. Another thing is that there's a
telegram account that alerts people to

people who have been arrested. And the
operational assumption is that if you've

been arrested, you're compromised. And so
it posts the names and the telegram

handles the people who have been captured
by police and tells people delete this

person's contact, like delete this person
from all of your chats like you cannot

also be compromised. So that's another way
they're trying to kind of maintain that

very basic security. I don't know how well
this is working, to be very honest. I

haven't really heard any reports of people
who have been arrested for stuff that

they've done on telegram. But that might
also just be that it hasn't been reported

or we don't know about this. It's also
possible that the police has been just

very busy mass arresting people at
protests and that they have all this data

and they might be watching people. It
might come back around to that later on.

Sometimes people have actually been able
to identify the telegram handles or think

they've been able to identify the telegram
handles of policemen, which led to several

people being kicked out of groups. But
again, so the police is probably watching,

but we don't know how much information
they have access to. In real life, you can

see kind of on the lower right corner, the
usual outfit that people are wearing.

These are front liners who are tend to be
more directly involved in clashes with the

police. That's the people who cover their
faces with usually gas masks, sometimes

just simple surgical masks. They're
wearing goggles and hard hats to protect

against projectiles, pepper spray, water
cannons, tear gas, the things you

encounter in the streets of Hong Kong
these days. In addition to that, people

have all of these umbrellas which they use
to hide each other's identities. For

example, if people are building a street
blockade, then you always have some people

who are building who kind of like building
the blockade. And there's other people who

are holding up umbrellas to prevent them
from being photographed, especially given

how much covered the protests are. This is
especially important because there are

reporters and media around all the time
and people want to make sure that they

don't accidentally end up on camera while
committing what is probably a crime.

There's other ways this is being used as
well. For example, when people were

destroying cameras in the metro stations
in some cases because people were very

aware of the fact that they were being
filmed by someone who they couldn't talk

to or people have asked individuals to
delete pictures and videos when they've

seen them film them. But they've also
destroyed essentially these cameras on the

metro. And again, then you will have
someone kind of like cover you with an

umbrella to avoid a person being filmed in
the middle of essentially committing

vandalism. The other thing is that people
have these, so this kind of uniform, what

you can also see here, so people are
essentially is wearing black for the

protests, which also means that you have
no recognizable marks like on yourself,

like in the moment. And then when you kind
of practice to be water, if you hear

police is coming, you go into a side
street. And often there are people who are

not participating in the protests, like
personally directly, but to, for example,

donate regular clothing. That's basically
clothes like any clothes that aren't

black. This was particularly like in the
summer when you had these mass protests,

like people would just bring T-shirts into
metro stations. So people were often

leaving with the last train. And so people
were just rushed to metro stations. You

kind of like see people changing inside
streets to make sure they get out of those

very recognizable black gear and to
essentially change into these clothes. So

HongKongers have basically managed to
build the world's largest black block,

which is another way of maintaining
anonymity.

Applause
The government recognizes that this is a

problem for them. And they tried in
October to address this by implementing a

mask ban. So they're essentially like the
mask ban itself says that anyone who wears

a mask at a lawful rally or a march or an
unlawful or unauthorized assembly or

during a riot. So even if you go to a
peaceful protest, but you cover your face,

you can be sentenced up to one year in
prison simply for trying to hide your

face. This is a law that was implemented
under the emergency ordinance, which

essentially is kind of like a national
security law that gives the government

sweeping powers in particular emergency
situations. It is currently unclear to

what extent this is constitutional. So
this mask ban has been challenged in court

multiple times and it's currently still
making its way through the courts. But

it's also possible that basically Beijing
might come in and say we have the ultimate

right to interpret the Hong Kong basic
law. So we will say that this law has to

be constitutional. So this is something
that we just need to wait out. But I think

it's a sign where we can see that the
government wants to essentially limit

people's ability to maintain their
anonymity. And people were really pissed

at this. Like this was announced on a
Friday, just kind of like during the

workday. And after like in the afternoon,
once people got off work, people went out

on the streets like people were just like
turning up, like schoolchildren in the

school uniforms, people in their office
clothing. Just everyone put on a mask and

was like, we want to keep this right,
because that day at midnight, the mask ban

was supposed to be implemented. So you had
less than 24 hours notice and it went into

force the next day. Strategy five:
Division of Labor. This, again, is

something that I think is very interesting
and uniquely Hong Kong, very uniquely Hong

Kong, like the be water strategy. So there
is this idea climbing the hill in

different ways. This is again a lesson
that people learn from through 2014,

because post 2014 and also in 2014 itself,
one of the biggest weaknesses of the pro-

democracy movement was that there was a
lot of internal division. People really

disagreed over tactics and there were
fights over who was leading the movement

and who should be listened to and what the
right strategy was. People have now kind

of come to the opposite extreme. But
people are saying whatever you do,

everyone is climbing the mountains.
Everyone's trying to get to the top and

everyone's using their own ways of getting
there. And everyone's using their own

their own path, essentially. Hence the
mountain imagery. I think one example that

really illustrates this very clearly was a
person who's kind of like middle aged and

works in the finance industry in Hong
Kong. So they're very well off, have

profited from the system as it exists and
but also support the protests. And they

said I did not get involved in the
protesters destructive actions and I would

never. But I will try my best to give them
more support and delivering materials,

donations and my presence. So you can see
that there's a very clear differentiation

between the goal that people have and kind
of like the methods, like there's a lot of

people who say, I disagree with those
methods, but essentially I will not

undermine people who are working towards
our same goal – the five demands – in

different ways. This is also something
that's notable because in 2016, violence

was something that was condemned. I cannot
speak to that many other contexts but for

example, in the US, where I study, and
similarly in Germany, once protesters use

violence, even if it is just destruction
of things, often there is a lot of

pushback and people say that has
delegitimized you. This is something that

is not really working that well in Hong
Kong anymore. So there are clearly people

who disagree with vandalism and also there
people who are against the protesters

because of vandalism, that's very clear.
Based on the polls, I would say maybe 30,

40 percent, but I'd have to check the
exact numbers. But there are a lot of

people who say, even if I disagree with
you, I will still support you, because our

overall goal is what is most important. Applause
I want to give two examples quickly of how

this can work. So one example of this is
that people have gained an increasing

economic understanding of how politics
works. So rather than saying we just want

to change laws, there also say we need to
attack, for example, and we need to hold

accountable companies that are supporting
the government and we need to make people

and government supporting companies make
feel the pain for essentially their

political support for them. So people have
started boycotting stores that don't

support the protests. And again, this is
something that is all collected online

where you have these incredible resources,
where you have entire maps. So, you know,

you can make these custom Google Maps. So
there's custom Google Maps that tell you

which stores in Hong Kong support the
protests. And there's entire lists for

different sectors where, for example, like
for food, it says these stores are for us

and these stores are against us. And one
of the people I spoke to was incredibly

amazed at this. They're almost 40 years
old. They've lived in Hong Kong for a long

time and were often very frustrated with
how unpolitical the city was. But they

said now it's the exact opposite and
everything has become political. So they

said wherever you get your lunch, where
you get your coffee, even what kind of

public transport you take, everything is
now political and everything you use to

show which political side you're on. And
the idea is really to essentially hurt

stores that much that it becomes unviable
to be against the protest movement

economically. Some people also use the
lists for essentially vandalism against

stores. This is special. Been seen with,
for example, Starbucks because the people

who own the Starbucks franchise in Hong
Kong have very vocally opposed the

protests. And so in some cases, that means
also hurting them financially by throwing

in windows. Applause Another example was the
same person who I spoke to had by the time I

spoke to them a couple of weeks ago,
stopped going out to protests. And this

really surprised me because I met them
during the protests in 2014. And I thought

if there was one person who's middle aged
and who would still go out, then that's

you – in terms of the people who I know –
but they were like, well, I decided that I

have different skills and that my design
skills are something that I can use better

in a different place. And so because at
the time, people were already working

towards the district council elections and
they were still working, I don't know

what, like 60 hour weeks or something
crazy. But they decided that they would

start working with a campaign for one of
the local, for one of the people who was a

candidate for the district council, who
was a person who had never been in

politics before. And this interview was
like, well, I can help this person. I'm

going to be able to help them get elected.
And so they went, essentially did social

media and like a lot of campaigning or
designing for them. And that's kind of

like a good sign. I think that's a good
example for the different types of effort

that went into that district council
election victory as well. Right. So

there's all these people who made a choice
that this is something that they care

about and that again, they're all climbing
the mountain in different ways. And these

people decided that their way is
supporting local politicians to get

elected into the district councils. The
other thing is that this division of labor

doesn't only happen in kind of like in
terms of what you choose that you're

doing, but that's also an incredibly
sophisticated and very well defined

division of labor. So this is kind of like
a representation of kind of what the

movement is supposed to be like. So
there's this idea that like we're all Hong

Kongers and we're all part of this
movement and it doesn't matter what we're

doing, we're all part of the same thing.
And so that's kind of like a diversity

that gets represented a lot. And that kind
of appears in a lot of protest art as

well. The most distinctive group that
you've definitely seen are frontliners. So

this is these are people who wear kind of
like the most recognizable uniform,

they're all in black so they cannot be
identified, they wear gas masks to protect

themselves against pepper spray and tear
gas, goggles for the same reason, hard

hats, they often have gloves to be able to
grab teargas canisters that are being

thrown at them. In some cases, they have
water bottles to extinguish the tear gas

canisters to essentially avoid being
affected by the tear gas itself. And this

is kind of like how you signal that
you're, sometimes they're called the

Braves, but essentially, this is about as
radical as you can look as part of the

Hong Kong protest movement. These are the
people who are going to be in clashes with

police. You can see that one of them is
about to probably grab a brick. But these

are frontliners. One particular type of
front liner are the – I'm missing the

English word right now – basically there's
the people are supposed to extinguish

fires usually. Firefighters, yes. Sorry.
Firefighters, except instead of fighting

fire, they're fighting teargas and so on
the right, you can see someone from an

incredibly iconic scene where someone used
like a metal tin that they usually use to

steam fish and he like he extinguished the
teargas with water and then put the metal

tin just on the teargas. And people were
making fun for like how protest ready

people are just by having your regular
Chinese kitchen. On the left this is a

reference to a strategy that people have
been using and where essentially they put

a traffic cone on a tear gas canister the
moment like they find it. And so one

person holds the traffic cone. One person
puts water in at the top to extinguish the

tear gas. And then some cases, people also
put it into plastic bags that are full

with water twisting or tear gas and in
some cases, throw it back at the police.

And I think I have a video of this
happening, actually.

Video playing
It's also you can see they didn't do this

for the first time, right? So they've been
doing this for a while. It's sad in many

ways that these are young people who have
to do that and who feel that it's like a

thing that they need to do to be able to
be heard. But it's also something that was

a video out of Chile a couple of weeks ago
where essentially Chilean protesters were

using a similar strategy to extinguish
tear gas. And someone who was apparently

from Chile posted it somewhere saying,
thank you, Hong Kong. So they clearly

there's been some like, oh, let's see how
we can adopt these strategies for what's

happening in Chile itself, which I think
is an important thing to look at as well,

because in some ways, Hong Kongers have
learned from other places but also now

people are looking at Hong Kong and
looking at these strategies and adopting

them in other instances. Another important
group are peaceful protesters. I am very

thankful that someone memed all of them,
all of the important group, so I have

these like standard images that I can use.
And this is really the only thing that you

kind of like need for a peaceful
protester. You just need a surgical mask,

maybe a hat to protect your identity a bit
more. And that's it. You just need to go

out in the street. These are the people
who frontliners in many ways feel like

they're defending. When I was talking to a
few people who are still in high school

and who essentially are frontliners and
who've been in clashes with the police

directly and when I asked them why they're
doing it, they're saying I don't even know

whether we can get our political aims, but
the very least I can do is I can be one

more person who is there and when the
police advances, I'm going to be one more

person who can make sure that the police
doesn't get to the peaceful protesters

behind me, because they're not equipped to
deal with teargas and they're not equipped

to deal with that pepper spray. So I will
be here and I will give them enough time

so they can retreat and go home. But
there's a lot of kind of like lionization

of frontliners because they're kind of
like the heroes of the movement, they're

flashy heroes. But also everyone knows
that the movement is not going to succeed

in any way, it wasn't be able to keep
going because just of frontliners, right.

So peaceful protesters are essentially the
heart of the movement as well, the people

who keep coming out in numbers. So there's
a lot of reminders that we all need to

work together. This is kind of this idea,
we cannot be divided. So it goes back to

this idea: we all climb the mountain in
different ways, right. So we are all

important. And in both of these kind of
like pieces of art you can see now, right,

you can see the recognizable frontliner on
the left in both cases because he has the

hard hat and a bit more gear is kind of
like ready to get into a fight with the

police. But next to the frontliner you in
both cases have someone who just put on a

mask, maybe came straight from the office,
maybe straight from school. And those

people are working together because if
only if you had only one of those, you

probably wouldn't be able to keep going
for half a year. Applause Another group that I

think is really interesting is logistics,
because people have now adopted all all

these strategies to how they can kind of
like deal with the things that police is

throwing at them. So a year ago or even
couple of months ago, teargas was still

something that kind of like made people
leave and made people go away. A water

cannon would scare people away, but people
have really adapted and teargas doesn't do

that much in Hong Kong anymore, to be very
honest. One person who's 19 and who I talk

to and was like, doesn't the teargas
stink. And they were like, well, the first

time, yes, but then you get used to it and
you just keep going. And to do that, you

need kind of all this gear, right? Like,
you need to be equipped. You need to have

hardhats. You need to have all these
umbrellas. And so there are people kind of

like in the background for collecting
material near a big protest sites where

they know there will be protests and then
they're carrying them, kind of like in

cartons. In some cases, they're collecting
different types of shields. And so when it

comes to a clash with the police, they
make sure that stuff gets passed on to the

front lines. I didn't include it in the
presentation, but there's incredible

videos of, in some cases, maybe a
kilometer long human chain where you just

have like tons of peaceful protesters,
like passing things on to make sure that

things get to the people who were in the
clash with the police. And logistics are

the people who make sure that the stuff is
around. It is kind of like at these

collection points and is then given to the
people who really need it. It's also, one

person I spoke to who does a lot of
logistics said I am not someone who would

fight with the police in this movement,
but I still want to give some help. And so

I decided to manage resources such as
medical resources or protest gear. And so

medical resources, for example, might be
like saline solution, which you can use to

wash people's eyes out if they have been
affected by pepper spray or teargas. And

so this is someone who said, I am not a
frontliner and I'm not going to be part of

that. But I will be right there. I think
these people are doing important work. I'm

going to do exactly what I can within my
power to make sure that they have what

they need. Applause First aiders are incredibly
important in the movement as well, because

people have started to mistrust hospitals
a lot, because people are worried that the

government might go and get their hospital
records. So if they get injured as part of

a clash with police, that might include
getting beaten up by police. There've been

people, there was one person who was shot
in the chest and who tried to run from the

police, almost succeeded, but then was
arrested. But so if someone like that

doesn't trust the hospitals, doesn't go to
a hospital, first aiders are the ones who

are going to treat those injuries. So
these people are around and are visibly

marked as first aiders and make sure that
people get as much medical treatment as

they need to the extent that they're able
to. There was one incredibly hard

situation for them, I think in November,
when people were occupying the Chinese

University of Hong Kong. And there was a
real battle where you basically had a

front line, like you kind of see it in
like movies where someone is trying to

take in a castle or something like that,
right. So the real battle line where

people kept getting hit and injured and
first aiders kept running in and out,

grabbing people and carrying them to a big
sports field that was just full of injured

people where they were treating all of
them. And all of these are volunteers.

applause
There's more people in the background, and

I could keep going about this, my friends
will be able to attest to the fact that I

can talk about this for an hour or longer.
I think one other group of people that I

wanted to quickly talk about are the
people who drive like the school buses.

School buses are code for cars that go to
protest sites and pick people up. So for

example, when the people were stuck, or
people were stuck at the airport, you

could see that literally thousands of
Hongkongers grab their own cars and just

drove out and said we will pick people up.
And so they post on Telegram and they say,

hey, I'm a parent, I'm going to pick up my
children. I have space for three people

laughs And then there's even there's
also code for. So this why used that image

cause it's like the parents taking care of
the kids. It's a very, very wholesome

imagery. And they have this, this code
essentially where they're saying: if you

say that you have stationery in your car,
that means that you have clothes to change

in. So if someone is wearing all black you
have some other clothes that they can

change in. And so there's entire telegram
channels where just every post is just

someone going from A to B. It says when
they're leaving, it says how much space

they have. It also often says if there's a
female driver so people can feel safe. And

to make sure that you don't get accidently
picked up by undercover cops people are

maintaining an inofficial database of cars
that they've identified to undercover cop

cars. And so there's a telegram bot. And
if you like, so these posters, once you

have someone's license plate, you go to
the bot and you're like, is this a cop and

the bot will tell you yes or no.
applause

In addition to that you have thousands,
countless working groups where people are

just kind of working around the clock.
This is an example of a PR translation

working group that basically translated
this particular poster from originally

Chinese into a bunch of languages, one of
them is German on the left, another is

Korean on the right. And it says: Hong Kong
is facing a humanitarian crisis. What I

think is interesting about this is that
some of these groups are basically working

around the clock. So something happens in
Hong Kong during the day, by evening often

protest art comes out that kind of like is
reframing an incident or is trying to

explain what purchases did if they feel
like they need to explain themselves. And

then when Hongkongers sleep, people who
live in Europe, but who many cases are

still from Hong Kong and people who live
in the United States work through their

evenings and through their mornings. So by
the time Hongkongers wake up, they often

can have these messages in different
languages. And so this happened doing the

airport protest, where on the 13th of the
morning, people just woke up and had

posters in like ten different languages
that explain what was happened in Hong

Kong, printed them and went to the airport
straight away at 8:00 a.m..

applause
I want to share one more story, because I

think this is really one of the most gut
wrenching examples of what people have

been able to achieve just by cooperating
and also by being completely anonymous

together, where during the Pope, Poly,
during the siege at the Polytechnic

University, Hong Kong. So when hundreds of
people were stuck on that university and

didn't want to go out. Suzanne Sataline
reported for Quartz that there was at

least one person and probably more who
managed to get out from the university

through the sewers. So this person went
down into the sewers, wading through

probably knee, like kind of chest high
waste water, in the dark, not knowing

where they were going. And then actually
were able to escape the university that

way. Because they were talking to people
on telegram who had dug up maps of the

Hong Kong sewage system and like directed
this person, they were telling them, this

is where you go. You hit kind of like, you
hit like a crossroads and then you take a

left, like this is where you take a right.
And then the last moment they actually,

the plans were changed. And so they were
told, you cannot go to the exit we

initially told you because we've seen
police there. Right? Telegram channels,

again, like all of this comes back
together. And so they're watching police

moving in that you can't go there. There's
police there. Instead, we need to send you

to a different exit. So he goes to that
exit and there's someone there waiting for

him who lifts, who lifts the lid, lets him
out of the fucking sewage system. And then

there's people waiting for them there, a
"school bus" who grabs them and takes them

somewhere else. And that's how he got out
of the university. And he still doesn't

know any of those people. They're all
still strangers.

applause
The strategy number 6, that I think is

important, are counter narratives. So the
Hong Kong government and the Beijing

government have a very clear framing for
what how they want to frame the entire

protest, right. So they want to say these
are vandals, these are rioters, they have

no legitimate demands, they just want to
destroy things, nothing about them is

legitimate, or democratic, or politically
justified in any way. People realize that

maybe memes are nice, but memes are maybe
not enough. So part of the movement,

actually Kim, started creating a citizen's
press conference where people anonymously

basically hold a press conference. And you
can see that press is coming there, right,

because you have all the official mics.
And so all these new media outlets

actually going there and talking to them.
In the background you have someone who's

interpreting this into sign language.
Because they essentially know we need to,

at least somehow, try to get control of
the narrative again ourselves to make sure

there's not just a government who gets to
define what is happening. The last

strategy that I want to talk about is
related to both counter narratives, but

also to organizing and mobilizing, which
is the last thing that I want to talk

about. So as an introduction to that, I
want to show you a video that in many ways

I think demonstrates some of the capacity
that people have been able to build. What

I'm going to show you is a protest
anthem called Glory for Hong Kong. As I

said earlier, Hong Kong was a city that
was first under colonial rule by the

British and is now under rule by China
without people really getting a choice at

any point. And so in early September
people crowdsourced an anthem for the city

online and someone composed it and
published it on September 11th. And

several days later someone had arranged
for an orchestra. And right after that

this video went online.
Video plays (orchestra/choir)applause

I think everyone who is interested in the
meaning of that song, I would recommend

that you go and read Vivienne Chow's
article about it in The New York Times

because she wrote from a musical and
cultural perspective about what it meant

for her to have grown up in a city where
there was never a song that she identified

with. And for this to be the first time,
that was kind of like an anthem for what

she considers her home. So I would
recommend you all go and read that. In the

long term a lot of the strategies that
I've talked about have been able to

sustain the movement and have been able to
help people and individuals avoid arrest

in the short term. But the question is how
sustainable this entire movement is in the

long run. I think the orchestra it's like
a fun, they call themselves Black

Blorchestra, by the way. It's a fun
example of how people can just get tons of

people together and suddenly come up with
an entire orchestra and fund that entire

thing with like pretty good production
value, I just downloaded a shitty version.

But, so that's happening, right, people
are building all these groups, building

all these new ties. A lot of times they
building these ties with people who they

don't know and who are anonymous to them.
But in a lot of other cases, one person

who I spoke to said that essentially
they've started exercising together as a

neighborhood because he says that we
cannot trust the police to save us. And if

someone from the government comes to
attack us we want to be able to defend

ourselves. So then he's also like
organizing this in kind of like small

neighborhood groups. So there's all these
people who have lived in an anonymous

major metropolis for years and probably
barely talk to each other, but who now

basically getting together and starting to
do things together and trying to keep

these things going to protect themselves.
Another thing is that there has been a

push for building and creating unions. So
labor unions, more than 24 have been

formed its entire year across a range of
sectors. There were several attempts at

organizing strikes in Hong Kong over the
summer and a lot of those weren't very

successful because people still went to
work in many cases. But so people are

essentially organizing more long term and
trying to get people to join unions, so

they have organizing capacity for the long
run. And again, this is a picture from the

district council elections. It's
incredibly important to recognize the

organizational capacity that went into the
elections. There are all these people out

there now that know how to mobilize and
have now partaken in like a political

campaign and the electoral campaign and
all of that is knowledge that now exists

amongst young people, amongst older
people. And all of these are organizations

and things that hopefully people will be
able to build on in the long run. So what

next? I think it's important to recognize
that what people have been able to do in

Hong Kong is incredible from an
organizational capacity and also has meant

that people have given up a lot. In many
cases. And people have gone broke, there

are young people who have been kicked out
of their homes by their parents because

they don't see eye to eye politically.
Some people have just spent all their

money on protest gear. Other people are
facing charges of up to 10 years in

prison. And because of the incredible
backlog, might not know for a very long

time what's going to happen. People are
scared of the police. And so one big

question is how things will be able to
keep going. And I think one thing that if

you talk to someone from Hong Kong who was
part of the protest movement and that's

also incredibly important to recognize
that everyone in Hong Kong, both, also

people on both sides, right. Like everyone
in Hong Kong, these are people and these

are not people who are just kind of like
acting out like a geopolitical game, like

risk or something, but these are real
people there who are really going to the

limits in many cases. More specifically
there is a rally planned and announced for

January 1st. They're still waiting for
their letter of no objection, which means

they don't know yet whether it will be a
legal rally or not. And so this is really

going to be them trying, their movement
trying to show that they're going to be

able to keep going through 2020 and maybe
longer. The unrest and discontent is not

going to go away. I think that's very
clear. So many people have been

politicized over the past few months and
so many people have lost trust in their in

their government and in very fundamental
institutions such as hospitals and the

police. And that's something that's not
just going to go away because that's going

to be a problem that will haunt the
government for a long time to come.

Especially remember that number, almost a
hundred percent of people under 16 oppose

the extradition bill and those people are
deeply involved, incredibly politicized.

And so, if anything, the people who are
coming up are more anti government, are

more willing to go protest than anyone
who's already out in the streets. The

things things that you can do. Go and
follow Hong Kong journalists and support

them. If you're on Twitter, Laurel Chor
and Hong Kong hermit, I've linked both of

them, have Twitter lists where you can
follow local journalists who've been

living in Hong Kong, who grew up in the
city, who have been reporting on the

protests for months, in some cases for
years. A lot of these people have already

reported on the Umbrella Revolution. So go
and follow those people because they

essentially have the best information.
They speak the language and they will be

able to report firsthand. And you'll also
run into those crazy livestream web sites.

You should also follow and donate to Hong
Kong Free Press, which is an independent

media outlet, was formed after the
umbrella protests. And it's been doing

some incredible coverage. They hired a
really good photographer who took a bunch

of the pictures that you saw here. And she
also was arrested by police at some point

for participating in a riot. So, yeah, go
do that, follow those people. This is a

story that is not over and it will not be
over anytime soon. And so the only thing I

can tell you is to go to the source and
listen to the people who are right on the

ground. Last but not least: I can only
speak about things that pertain to China,

because that's my area of expertise or in
this case, Hong Kong. But this has been a

year with a lot of protest movements all
over the world. And Hong Kongers are by

far from the only people who went onto the
streets at great, immense personal risk to

stand up to their governments. In India,
in student protests against an anti-Muslim

exclusion law, I think 17 or 20 people
were killed in the past few weeks and the

Iraqi government just gunned down
protesters that went out to protest for

political rights. People have been
protesting in Chile, in Iran, in Syria

and a bunch of places. And those things
might not be as well covered necessarily

as Hong Kong. I certainly don't read about
them as much, but that's also my personal

interest. But I would encourage you, I
think if you care about the things that

people are doing in Hong Kong that they're
trying to achieve, I would urge you to

inform yourself about the things that are
happening in other places as well. And in

a lot of cases, people who are in these
places recognize that they stand for

similar things, right? They want their
governments to listen to them and they

want to be represented. On the left, you
have a grafitti from Lebanon, where in the

middle you can see the Hong Kong slogan,
five demands, not one less, in Chinese,

stenciled on the wall. And on the left and
the right, you have Iraqi and Lebanese

protest slogans that called for the for
all corrupt government officials to

resign, regardless of which ethnic and
religious faction they're part of. Whereas

on the right you have a protest poster
from someone from Hong Kong who just lists

all the protests that they say we're
fighting for the same thing. We're

fighting for freedom and justice. And so
we we should feel like we're part of the

same thing. And so I just want to urge you
that if you care about any of these

things, then you should probably care
about it in more than one place. Thank you.

applause, exclamation

Herald (H): Thank you, Katharin. I don't
know if I told you, but I asked for this

shift specifically because of your talk.
K: Thank you. lauthing

H: It was everything I expected and more.
So we have time for two or three

questions. Go take one question from the
Internet, because there is a lot of people

who couldn't make it.
Signal Angel: Yeah. So it seems that

Telegram is a used a lot during protests.
And one of the IRC users mentions that

it's centralized and asks if there were
any problems with this centralized and

controlled thing and if they are attempts
to move this to decentralized

communication solutions.
K: Thank you. So I think. Oh, I just saw

that I misspelled MIT in my email. That's
very smart. Um. laughter The telegram question is

important. So Telegram has actually come
under DDOS attacks for multiple times. The

first time was in the summer and there was
another time later like a couple of weeks

ago. So that shows clearly that Telegram
is a vulnerability in some ways, right? In

the summer after the DDOS attack, Telegram
said that they think it was a nation state

actor just based on the volume of the DDOS
attack. So that is kind of like a point of

vulnerability. In reaction to that and
another DDOS attack on LHKG, there was

some discussions of moving to other
platforms, but those ultimately didn't pan

out. So I think organizationally it is
probably not ideal to be working on a

centralized platform. But the crucial
question is whether you have alternatives

that people can get on easily, because
you're organizing so many people and you

really want like the smallest amount of
friction possible. And I think that is the

biggest challenge. So the more kind of
like proposals for using different apps

that, for example, work without Internet
for the worst case scenario, that the

government might switch up the Internet in
Hong Kong. But my read is that those

ultimately didn't pan out because those
are not necessarily apps that people are

used to that might not be as easy to use.
And also because there is kind of like an

institutional stickiness. So I think it
would probably take some kind of disaster

like either Telegram getting blocked or
taken down in Hong Kong or kind of like

being completely taken down by DDOS attack
for people to actually switch to another

platform. So I think there I agree it's
when I started from a security

perspective, it's probably not ideal. But
their biggest challenge is the kind of the

organizational challenge of getting people
to move wholesale to completely different

platform.
H: Thank you. And now one question from

the audience. Microphone number three.
It's the last question. So make it count.

Q: That's a lot of responsibility. But I
really wanted to ask about police

brutality. You mentioned that people were
surprised by police brutality. But how can

it be a surprise. So it's only new police
force from continental China whom became

suddenly brutal or people were not paying
attention or was police brainwashed?

K: Thank you. That's a good question. And
I don't think we have absolute answers to

this. The reason people were surprised is
that the Hong Kong police force used to

have an incredibly good reputation as a
police force that was very reasonable and

appropriate in its use of force. And
that's clearly a reputation that's

completely gone down the drain over the
past few months. The thing about police

coming in from China is something there
are repeated reports, but they're always

incidental. And I haven't really seen any
large scale verified reports that there

was any like major influx of mainland
police officers into the Hong Kong police.

So it's probably not that. I think one
thing that people observed after the

Umbrella Movement was that there was kind
of like a siege mentality within the

police itself so that they kind of felt
like they were being assaulted by the

entirety of society. So it's possible that
that was kind of like kind of like the

formation of like increasingly strictly
drawn lines and camps where the police

felt like they're under assault from
everyone else and that they're justified

in using force. Which might be one of the
explanations why they've also been so

opposed to kind of like an independent
investigation. In addition to that,

another thing is that they've also been
completely operating at capacity. So we

know that they've paid, I think, 900
million Hong Kong dollars to something an

absurd amount in overtime pay to the
police. So I think one thing is also that

these are people who in many cases are not
trained in dealing with the events that

they're supposed to be dealing with. And
so it seems that they are possibly

reacting by lashing out and in more
violent ways than like would probably be

appropriate. So it might just also be a
lack of training, but there's no

definitive answer.
H: Thank you

K: Thanks
H: Katherin Tai, who has been heroically

standing here for 90 minutes talking
nonstop, which is hard! So, people, a huge

round of applause.

applause

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