Students host a discussion regarding the ongoing protests in Hong Kong to spread awareness.
Lex Spirtes/Assistant Photo Editor
Students from the Hong Kong Student Association hosted a discussion on Thursday, Oct 9 regarding the recent tumultuous protests in Hong Kong. In the past two weeks, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Hong Kong, pressing for electoral reform. The University event was organized by Amy Zhang ’15, Nina Stender ’16, and Kaitlin Chan ’17.
According to Zhang, the media is not portraying the situation from all sides.
“It’s…an exploration of different perspectives on this,” Zhang said. “I feel like a lot of pro-Hong Kong perspectives are being shared by the news, and there’s this whole other side of the conflict, which is a lot of Hong Kong people against Hong Kong people.”
Chan realized that students who were raised in America may have difficulty in understanding the complexity of the issues.
“I can’t imagine just being from the U.S. and having grown up in the U.S. and having parents from the U.S. and having the energy to really concern yourself with this issue that might feel abstract and foreign,” Chan said.
Chan said the discussion was necessary in order to inform fellow University students.
“If I say we didn’t have a choice [to host this discussion], it sounds like we were forced, but what I meant by not having a choice is that if something so directly involves all the people that you love and your entire life, you can’t really choose not to care,” Chan said.
Stender spoke about how Americans are comparing the protests in Hong Kong to recent protests in the United States, but added that many people are uninformed and misunderstand the situation.
“I think it’s hard for a lot of people who aren’t from Hong Kong to even have a basic understanding of what’s happening and people try and make it fit these things they understand, like, ‘Oh, is what’s going on in Hong Kong with the police Hong Kong’s version of Ferguson?’” Stender said. “Just because there’s police brutality involved, it doesn’t mean it’s the same thing.”
The goal of the conversation, Stender explained, was to help students understand what the protests are truly about. She added that another goal of the discussion was to educate students who lack historical knowledge about Hong Kong.
“It’s a movement for universal suffrage, and that’s a very big distinction…. and when the conversation becomes about [how people] don’t think it’s realistic for Hong Kong to be independent from China, that’s not even the conversation anyone is having in Hong Kong,” Stender said. “There’s a lot of misinformation going around and we want to have a conversation. That’s pretty much the entire goal.”
Chan added that the protests have acted as a unifying force for students on campus.
“The Hong Kong Student Association has never united for a common cause like this before,” Chan said.
Zhang explained that although protests started about two weeks ago, they waited to hold the event in order to see how protests would unfold in China and to give students the opportunity to have more time to plan.
“When we decided to hold the event, we wanted enough time to plan it and we wanted to see how it would pan out because we knew things would drastically change, probably over the weekend,” Zhang said. “Last Tuesday, violence wasn’t really an issue, but now it is and the government hadn’t responded that much by then. But now the government was and is trying to negotiate talks, and now those have fallen through.”
The Hong Kong government has cancelled talks with student protestors that were scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 9.
Stender added that the discussion was about larger issues at hand in Hong Kong.
“I don’t think it’s really about the protests, but the ideas and the interests behind the protests,” Stender said.
The University’s Office of International Studies (OIS) reached out to the Hong Kong Student Association and offered to sponsor a speaker who is knowledgeable on the situation for its lunch series. Stender, Chan, and Zhang are eager for this to happen in order to garner even more awareness.
“I’m willing to reach out and help coordinate [with OIS],” Stender said. “I think that they’ll mostly do that if we demonstrate an interest and a willingness to help them get attendance.”
Chan encouraged University students to learn more about the deep underlying issues behind the Hong Kong protests.
“It’s been simmering under the surface for a long time,” Chan said. “Now it just erupted.”