Witnessing the Hong Kong protests

After the Chinese government announced that only Bejing-vetted candidates will be allowed to run in Hong Kong’s 2017 elections, protests have broken out in the city. For the vast majority of the Penn community, the tumult is playing out across TVs and computer screens. But a few Penn students, and at least one recent grad, are witnessing the massive protests firsthand.

Engineering junior Trey Miller didn’t know he’d be getting a front seat to history when he first planned to study at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology this semester, but he joined the thousands of demonstrators in central Hong Kong on Monday night.

“I went originally to observe and show my support for the Hong Kong people. But once I got there, I was drawn by the energy of the people and ended up right in the middle of the protest outside the Central Government headquarters,” he said via email.

Miller said he was shocked by the civility of the protestors when he showed up that evening.

“The people at the protest were very welcoming. Within 30 minutes, I had received free food, water, goggles and a facemask,” he said. “There were first aid stations scattered throughout and people insisting I take a towel to wipe sweat as they misted us with cold water.”

Wharton junior Vera Kirillov was also at the Central Hong Kong protest on Monday. She too was taken by the politeness and calmness of the large crowd.

“With so many thousands of mostly young people gathered, I assumed it might be a little more chaotic, but the fact that so many people were all combining for the same cause and helping each other out by bringing provisions was a powerful thing to see,” she said via email.

Kirillov also took a facemask, though it was simply a precautionary measure that neither she nor Miller needed that evening, as riot police were not present. As the media has widely reported, though, the site of the protests was not always as peaceful.

Anjali Tsui, a 2013 College graduate and former Daily Pennsylvanian editor, works as a producer for CNN International in her native Hong Kong. She has been on the scene since protests began earlier this month. Tsui witnessed the violence on Sunday evening as police used pepper spray and tear gas on the crowds.

“Hong Kong is generally known as a really peaceful state-city. So even the protestors were really surprised that the police deployed to control the crowd,” she said.

However, she too witnessed the peaceful scene on Monday evening. While coordinating an interview with CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour and one of the movement’s leaders, Tsui saw a backdrop of thousands of protestors, holding their phones out and singing in unison. According to Miller, this was meant to be “symbolic as a sea of light against the darkness of brutality.”

The magnitude of the scene was captivating for Tsui.

“As a journalist it’s my duty to remain objective when covering the protests. I need to respect both sides, especially when we are recording,” she said. “But I couldn’t help but feel moved by the thousands of people at the site. It was pretty spectacular to see just regular Hong Kong people — young, old, rich, poor — in the hopes that their demands for democracy would be heard by the international community.”

And the cries for democracy are being heard around the world. Though Hong Kong is more than 8,000 miles away from Philadelphia, the conflict reverberates through campus for Penn students from the region. College sophomore Natalie Au feels close to the events taking place so far away.

“I wish I could be there with my friends and the other students right now to join the movement,” she said. “But all I can do here is hope for everybody’s safety and wait anxiously to see Beijing’s response.”

Au added that she is trying to organize events on campus “to offer a platform for students to ask questions and discuss the biggest unrest going on in [Hong Kong] in decades.”

Protest leaders will be deciding their next step on Oct. 1, China’s National Day. Regardless of what the outcome will be, Tsui agreed with Au about the magnitude of the events currently taking place.

“This is definitely the most chaotic scene that Hong Kong has seen, at least in decades,” she said.

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