Opinion | Beijing’s tightening grip is suffocating freedom-loving Hongkongers. It’s no wonder they keep rising up in protest

Beijing needs to understand that the extradition bill is just the latest in a string of proposed policy actions, including national security laws and restrictive universal suffrage, that threaten Hong Kong’s basic character

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A river of protesters cuts through Hong Kong’s cityscape on June 16, as an estimated two million people march from Causeway Bay to the government offices in Tamar against the proposal to amend the extradition law. Photo: Robert Ng

Published: 6:30am, 27 Jun 2019Updated: 7:31am, 27 Jun 2019

When your chokehold gets ever tighter, you either suffocate your target or it lashes out to survive. Hongkongers, especially the young, feel Beijing’s tightening grip is choking them. They are now lashing out like never before.

Call it the final straw. I call it a revolution Hong Kong-style – the vast majority preferring a peaceful show of people power, a minority believing civil disobedience is more effective, and a tiny radicalised faction convinced only violence can bring results.

This distinctly Hong Kong uprising astounded the world with images of millions marching peacefully, thousands surrounding police headquarters, and hundreds hurling bricks, attacking the police, and storming the legislature, unafraid of police tear gas and rubber bullets.

Bricks, sharpened poles, sieges, rubber bullets, and tear gas today. What next? Burning cars, bombs, shattered shop windows, and real police bullets in response? Let’s not even go there. But I have warned in the past of a slow-motion revolution.

This is what I wrote in January 2010 when youngsters rose up against the pricey express railway: “This has been a slow-motion revolution, something that’s simmered but been ignored for a long time … They’re leaderless, directionless and daring. And they’ve tasted the raw power of defiance.”

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