2014 Hong Kong Protests

Overview

2014 Hong Kong Protests, also known as the Umbrella Revolution, refer to ongoing pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong against the Chinese government's proposed electoral reform which would require the pre-approval of political candidates in the special administrative region by a nomination committee before proceeding to a vote by the general population.

Background

On August 31st, 2014, several new regulations for the 2016 Legislative Council and 2017 Chief Executive Elections were set during the 10th Session of the Standing Committee in the 12th National People's Congress of China, which imposed that a nominating committee should be formed to vet two to or three candidates by a simple-majority vote before they can contest in the general election. The decision was met by dissent from the citizens of Hong Kong, which has been promised universal suffrage under the principle of "one country, two systems" designated during the transfer of sovereignty from the British government to China in 1997. The protesters are demanding for a fair election with Civil Nomination, in which all voters can nominate candidates without any interference from the mainland government.

"the method for selecting the Chief Executive by universal suffrage must provide corresponding institutional safeguards for this purpose."

For more information, Hank Green of Vlogbrothers published a six-minute video to explain the background of the protest.

Notable Developments

On September 22nd, the demonstrations began with an university students' strike outside the government headquarters led by the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism. The protest quickly escalated into a violent clash by the evening of September 26th, when several hundreds of protesters breached a security barrier and occupied the front plaza of the Central Government Complex, which is supposed to be a public space for demonstration. They were subsequently removed by force on the next day.

The Umbrella Revolution

On September 28th, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, announced the official launch of Occupy Central with Love and Peace^[1], a civil disobedience campaign to demand universal suffrage during an appearance on the stage of the student protests. That same day, the demonstrators began occupying several major hubs across Hong Kong, prompting the riot police to disperse the crowds with pepper spray, tear gas and plastic bullets following several hours of stand-off. However, the excessive use of force by Hong Kong Police only fueled the demonstrations to expand into a non-centralized Occupy movement, as thousands more began participating in the protests throughout the city. The occupation was then dubbed the "Umbrella Revolution" in Western media, mainly due to protesters using umbrellas defense against tear gas and pepper spray.

Censorships in Mainland China

As the demonstrations continued to spread across Hong Kong, photographs and videos of crowds being dispersed by the riot police began to emerge on Instagram, Kakaotalk and other online photo-sharing services. On September 28th, the Chinese government began censoring the news coverage and witness reports from the scene by blocking access to certain social media accounts on Sina Weibo and blacklisting phrases "Tear Gas", "Hong Kong Students" and "Occupy Central" on the country's largest search engine Baidu.

#OpHongKong

On October 1st, hacktivist group Anonymous Asia ^[2] declared war on the Hong Kong government because of the excessive force used against the peaceful protesters. The group then took down various websites including the Hong Kong Police, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange etc. On October 11th at 3am HKT, they attacked Chinese government websites and leaked insider information and files to the public.

Thug Attacks in Mongkok

On October 3th, anti-occupy crowds started to emerge in Causeway Bay and Mongkok to violently destroy the resources the occupants have and remove the roadblocks. There were multiple incidents of sexual assaults towards female protesters caught on camera and quotes like "if you protest, you should expect to be sexually assaulted," and "so you think you have big boobs" were being said by the anti-occupy crowds.

At night, thugs started to emerge and beat up the peaceful occupants violently. During these incidents, the police was handcuffing the thugs, but releasing them after walking down a few blocks away.

“It’s not that we don’t want to help you,” the police officer said, describing the kinds of replies he heard. “We’ll help you, but we’ll let the mob fight you for a while” first, he said.^[3]

Reporters has found out that these thugs and anti-occupy crowds were paid to destroy the protest site and attack the protesters.

Related Memes

Birthday Song

On October 3rd, protester tried to use an amplifier to argue with the anti-occupy crowd, but by accident, the tune of Birthday Song was played. Protesters then started to sing the Birthday Song to scare off anybody who wants to start quarrel.

Umbrella Porn

On October 5th, a thread called “Using Porn to Spread Democratic Ideology from Hong Kong to Mainland”^[4] was created on HKGolden. As the Chinese government has been trying to censor news about the protests in Mainland China, some HKGolden users proposed to insert protest-related news and messages into porn video and upload it to major porn sites on the Mainland, mimicking a similar attempt in a dynastic Chinese revolution, in which paper slips where hidden in moon cakes.

Hui Sir 4pm

Since the occupation started, the Hong Kong Police has been holding press conferences every day at 4pm. Police Public Relations Branch Chief Superintendent Steve Hui gained Internet attention as he is known for always repeating certain phrases like "I will now recap in English" and doing English recaps of the announcements in his broken pronunciation.

Netizens have named the press conference “Hui Sir 4pm” and set up a fan page^[5] for the “television show”. As of October 11, the page has reached over 30 thousand likes.

Durians Something (榴蓮乜乜乜)

On October 3rd in Mongkok, an anti-occupy protester was carrying a knife and cutting open tents of the occupants. When a news anchor asked why he carries a knife, he said,

"I carry this knife everywhere I go because I love to eat fruits very much. I must eat fruit in every country I visit, durians something.”^[6]

As the explanation was very absurd, the form of this explanation has been parodied in different ways to explain everything. Notable satire YouTuber JFung also created a remix^[7] out of the interview.

Alexter

One week into the occupation, Internet users started to fantasize about romance between student leaders Alex Chow and Lester Shum. A fan page^[8] for this fictitious relationship was set up and it quickly gained popularity.

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Occupy Central with Love and Peace

^[2] Facebook – Anonymous Asia

^[3] Wall Street Journal – Hong Kong Police's Reputation as 'Asia's Finest' Hurt After Tear Gas Use

^[4] HKGolden – 以AV將香港既民主思想蔓延強國

^[5] Facebook – 四點鐘許sir

^[6] YouTube – 反對集會人士帶刀出街的原因

^[7] YouTube – 【 榴槤乜乜乜－JFung Remix 】Official MV

^[8] Facebook – 捍衛lester alex佔領巫山HeHe團