Dissident Spotlight: An Anonymous Hong Kong Citizen
A man who posted online about the Hong Kong apartment fire just over a week before was arrested. He was 71, and we still don't know his name.
On Sunday, Dec. 7, the New York Times reported that a 71-year-old man had been arrested for a post he made about the Hong Kong apartment fire.
A Hong Kong apartment tower caught fire on Nov. 26, and the death toll rose to 160 on Dec. 9. Faulty fire alarms and construction equipment seem to have led to the deadly fire.
Hong Kong residents demanded accountability from their government, which has unfortunately been the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1997. However, since China passed its National Security Law in 2020, Hong Kong’s autonomy has diminished significantly. It’s no longer China’s democratic bright spot.
People who wanted to know how their government allowed construction to kill and displace so many of its citizens. For making this demand, about two dozen people have been reportedly arrested.
The anonymous 71-year-old man was among them.
A Previous Life in Democracy
We don’t know the 71-year-old man’s identity, or if he spent his entire life in Hong Kong.
However, we do know that if he were in Hong Kong before 1997, then he lived part of his adult life under democratic conditions. It was a haven for dissidents from mainland China who faced imprisonment or death for their criticisms of the CCP.
The anonymous dissident of today is just an ordinary citizen who did what he likely spent his adult life doing: demanding what he was owed from the people who claimed to represent him. In China’s repressive environment, that expectation has become a crime. He was charged with “inciting hatred of the government.”
Salman Rushdie has noticed a strange pattern among authoritarians who crack down on dissidents. In his work with PEN America, Rushdie has found that even though these leaders behave terribly, they also want to be liked. They want the esteem that a leader who is both competent and personally good would enjoy. Authoritarians try to get it at gunpoint instead of through proper governance.
Dissidents aren’t just professional journalists, activists, or other public figures. They’re largely ordinary people who never make it to public view but make their mark on the regimes they fight by fighting for what they’re owed from their governments.