Even protest songs are now banned in Hong Kong, residents are leaving the city en masse

• Sjoerd den Daas

  China correspondent

Critical journalists and former politicians are behind bars. Protesting has been virtually impossible since Beijing imposed a strict national security law in Hong Kong. Yesterday, the highest court in Hong Kong ruled that there is no longer any room for the protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’. Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers have left the city. “The approach in Hong Kong was starting to look a lot like that of mainland China,” says Kelvin, who moved to Taiwan with his family.

In the streets of the Mong Kok district, in the heart of Hong Kong, neon lights that put the city on the world map still flash. “It’s part of our identity,” says a Hong Kong woman, who is just visiting this time. From Hong Kong she emigrated to Australia.

But compared to about twenty years ago, a lot has changed. Many of the neon lights have had to make way, Cardin Chan knows. She tries to save neon signs with the NGO Tetra Neon Exchange. “Because of safety, also because of the increasing popularity of LED lamps,” she says. “We have to prevent them from ending up in a landfill somewhere, they deserve more than that. Neon is closely linked to the development of modern China and the development of Hong Kong.”

I look forward to hitting the streets again in the future.

Where the signs can be saved, it turns out to be a lot more complicated for freedoms in the city. The organization of the annual Pride in the city was forced to move indoors at the end of last year. A permit for a parade was no longer even requested because the authorities would require everyone to register with their real name. Participants would also have to wear badges.

“Of course we want to maintain our values, but we do not want to impose restrictions on participants,” said Hong Kong Pride Parade spokesperson Cynthia Cheung, who organized a ‘pop-up Pride’ on the eighth floor in a co-working space. “Many people in the LGBTI community use pseudonyms, for example because they are not out of the closet. The most important thing is that everyone feels safe, but I look forward to going out on the streets again in the future.”

Zephyrus, who is committed to transgender people with his organization Quarks, is also realistic. “There are more ways to create visibility. This can be done on the street, but also via social media.” Chinese participants see that more is still allowed in Hong Kong on the mainland. “It is perhaps a little freer and more open here than in Shenzhen on the other side,” says one of them.

The crumbling freedoms are reason for many hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers to seek refuge elsewhere. The United Kingdom is the most popular, followed by Canada, Australia and Taiwan. “I thought it was wrong that the Hong Kong government used tear gas against the students,” says Kelvin, who emigrated to Taiwan, about the umbrella protests of 2014, when tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets for more democracy.

He also sometimes took to the streets himself. “I have always gone to peaceful and non-violent demonstrations,” he says of the 2019 protests, where organizers said at the time up to 2 million people demonstrated against a controversial extradition bill. “The other reason for leaving is economic. The pressure in Hong Kong was extremely high.”

In Hong Kong he was a bus driver at Disneyland, where he drove tourists around, among other things. He also worked for a home delivery service. “Sometimes up to 16 hours a day, I was exhausted.” Now he drives for Uber in Taipei. “The characters here are the same as in Hong Kong, but in Taiwan the steering wheel is on the left. In Hong Kong it is on the right.”

Kelvin is one of nearly 50,000 Hong Kongers who moved to Taiwan in the past five years. “In Taiwan you are free to do and say what you want. In Hong Kong, people are arrested for what they say. There is no freedom of expression anymore.” Is he not afraid that Taiwan will become the next prey of Chinese President Xi Jinping? “If things get tense in the Taiwan Strait, we will send our children to the United States,” Kevin says. “But I think we’ll stay here.”