DVC students watch as Hong Kong calls for Democracy
October 21, 2014
Diablo Valley College students with ties to Hong Kong are keeping a close eye on protesters there who are demanding changes to the electoral process.
The movement has been dubbed both Occupy Central and the Umbrella movement, with the latter coming from the use of umbrellas by protestors to defend themselves from tear gas and other attacks by the local police force to disrupt the mostly peaceful protests.
After news of police brutality became more widespread, the Umbrella movement seemed to revive as more protestors joined in.
Vanessa Wong, 19, a Hong Kong native and DVC art major, said “I do know some people that were ‘active’ in a sense that they went there. They just sat there, and I think more of them went as a symbol of support more than really actively doing anything. Some of my friends, however, don’t agree and think its a waste of time.”
Jeffrey Tiu, 20, communications major, who was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United States in his late teens, has had a different experience.
“Two of my friends are active protestors,” he said. “They do not follow words from any activist groups (or) political groups like Scholarism, Occupy Central and Pan-democratic party. Instead, they protest as individuals at MongKok, one of the three locations where protests are performed. They claimed they faced unjustified violence done by the Hong Kong Police Force.”
The conflict highlights the ongoing debate about China’s role as sovereign power over Hong Kong, which became a special administrative region of China on July 1, 1997.
Tiu says that he supports the demonstrators’ politics, but disagrees with their “keeping the movement as a bold, long term fight with the Hong Kong government.”
The risk, he says, is that “the involvement of foreign media and their wide news coverage builds an even larger wall of untrust between Chinese government and Hong Kong people, and forces Chinese government to impose stricter regulations to Hong Kong in the future to show their presence if they were to follow their national security doctrine.”
The protests date back to August, when several hundred people filled the courtyard of the Central Government Complex to protest the 12th National People’s Congress decision that the Chinese government would have to approve candidates in the election.
The group was led by Joshua Wong, founder of the Hong Kong activist group Scholarism, according to an article in the Guardian this month. This group, along with the Hong Kong Federation of Students, led boycotts and demonstrations against the Chinese government in response to the Aug. 31 decision to set limits for the 2016 Legislative Council election and the 2017 Chief Executive Election.
