Gloria Chang
Student activists can be a powerful force for social change. Gloria Chang—president of the Students’ Union of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 2000, when the school was the site of some major protests championing academic freedom—is perhaps the most well-known student leader of the past decade. Today, Chang devotes herself to environmental protection, working for Greenpeace for the last eight years. Chang tells Grace Tsoi about her recent trip to the North Pole and reminisces about her time as a university activist.
At dawn on September 6, I embarked on a journey to Longyearbyen in Norway. It is a settlement that’s the closet you can get to the 80th parallel north. We spent four days in total on the sea ice.
The earth, by default, is peaceful and beautiful. I was awed by the pureness and simplicity of the North Pole. It is like a silent call from the earth, and it’s such a big contrast when humans do so many sinful things to harm the environment.
Environmental protection is about public interest: fresh air; clean water; safe food and stable weather. It concerns everyone. By defending the earth’s resources, we help make a more just world.
When there is a natural disaster, it is always the poorest and most defenseless people that suffer the most. This is very unjust, because they are less polluting, less wasteful and have a lower carbon footprint.
More people are now talking about environmental justice. It is the most fundamental form of politics, and it is about interest redistribution. It is, in nature, the same as fighting for a more democratic government, a fair and free environment in which everyone can compete equally.
In July 2000, Robert Chung [the Director of the Public Opinion Programme at HKU] wrote an article in the newspaper, saying that he felt pressure from the school and that he couldn’t objectively continue his study on governance [following an HKU-led public opinion poll that gave unfavorable views of the city’s leaders at the time, Chung alleged that then-Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had leaned on him and other university heads to discontinue the study]. At that time, people thought very poorly of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. So it was easy for the public to link the two facts, and everyone became very concerned within a short time.
So we staged a protest outside the residence of the vice-chancellor for 16 hours [or so]. I didn’t count, but we stayed overnight. It was raining that night, and we looked very miserable. The public became sympathetic to our cause.