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I had a friend that was fierce in criticising and mocking the HK government and police. Then one day she was arrested near a rally because she wore black. Detained for two days, treated like a dog. Released without charge. But she’d been changed by the experience.
She could no longer walk past police on the pavement without anxiety. She would second-guess and censor herself when speaking about the authorities. She avoided gatherings because of the bad memories they induced. She wasn’t the same fiery mocking anti-authoritarian she’d been.
The experience turned her into a different person. That was presumably the whole point of it. It worked. But now it’s starting to feel like the same self-censorious evasive tendencies are creeping into the minds of friends who’ve never been detained.
The first sign with another friend was that he was not talking about things he would do nine months ago. Which may just be because it feels hopeless to do so. But when subjects have come up, even in private, it’s as if he’s started speaking from a script.
The first friend, the detained one, I visited in hospital on the second night. She was in the corner of the busy ordinary A&E waiting room, tightly guarded, in prison garb and chains. Everyone stared at her, like she was a killer or a wild animal. It was schoolground humiliation.
I remember she was in paper slippers. I said to her, “Where are your shoes!?” She looked at the policeman for permission to answer. They’d apparently been taken as ‘evidence’. It was completely surreal. She half-jokes about it now, but she will fear police forever.
For others the effect is more subtle and gradual. But it’s profoundly disturbing to think that extraordinary experiences shared by hundreds of thousands — many that were beautiful, such as the Hong Kong Way — are being wiped away. And that we should fear talking about them.
