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Thread - An enlightening encounter that just happened to me in a coffee shop in #HK: I was grabbing a quick coffee break at the famous Arabica coffee shop in Kennedy Town, and while I was chatting away with an HK friend in Mandarin about the anti-extradition bill protest,...
a high school girl walked over and handed me a flyer about Sunday's protest. She asked me "Can I invite you to join tomorrow's protest?" I was a bit surprised as I certainly didn't expect such reaction to the conversation that I had with my friend.
She told me she's 16, and that when she heard my Taiwanese accent, she decided to approach me and invite me to join the protest. "If the bill passed, I think the freedoms and rights that are guaranteed under the One Country, Two Systems’ model will disappear," she told me."
"I used to be actively criticizing the government on social media, but since the introduction of the controversial bill, I start to fear for my safety and exercise self-censorship."
She told me her school has a pro-China stance and that boycott classes were initially not allowed. However, the student council still tried to push back and eventually, some of them were able to join the city-wide boycott the class initiative on Thursday.
"I hope the other countries can hear what most Hong Kong people are demanding and help increase the pressure on our government. I don't want to live a life where I have to fear for expressing my views or simply watching or reading something that the government disapproves."
