Ok, now I'm crying at work because of this video that artist Hua Yong made for his 3-year-old daughter singing her happy birthday before the police came to take him away.
Hua Yong is a Beijing artist who's been fleeing from the police ever since he published videos showing how Beijing authorities demolished the houses of migrant workers. NYT story here: nytimes.com/2017/12/12/wor…
His crime was documenting what was happening to these migrant workers on the orders of the state.
In his video, the police are outside the door. He tells his 3-year-old daughter that everything he did was for her and her generation, so they wouldn't have to suffer like her father's and grandfather's generations.
He tells her he wants something better for his country: justice, equality, for the people to have freedom of speech. So that everyone can speak the truth under an open sky.
This is my contribution to this country, he says to his daughter. I am willing to use my life to defend the rights of citizens to speak freely, for the rights of citizens to be people.
Baby, he says. Daddy loves you. Happy birthday. Make sure you eat enough. Learn English with your mama, and someday, when daddy is free, he will take you all around the world.
I love you, he says. Daddy is doing this for your generation, so that you don't have to live such oppressed lives, like your dad and grandad.
Chinese people need to stand up, he tells her. I'm willing to lay down my life for this cause. If I end up in prison--let the chips fall where they may. It's something that you can't stop.
I'm doing this for my child, he says. For my rights to be a person. To speak the truth. For this, no matter what happens to me, it is worth it.
That's where the video ends. He posted a few more videos of him talking to the police outside his door. "Who do you think can come to save you?" the police ask. Then radio silence for the last few hours.
When I see something like this and then remember that essay that was going around yesterday about how that one guy felt so much freer to speak in China, it makes me sick.
