❝Take a deep breath of this air of freedom in America.
You don't get much of it back home.❠
Joshua Wong to a group of pro-China protestants in Washington DC
Joshua Wong wasn't even 1 year old when Hong Kong stopped being a British colony and went back under China's control, with the famous principle of "one country, two systems".
He didn't notice or experienced how much things changed until he turned 14 and founded the student activist group Scholarism and took on his first political 'battle' against the National Education curriculum, which was a way to promote pro-China propaganda.
The occupation of Civic Square by students has been Joshua's podium for global fame but also the beginning of more serious campaigns that led to the Umbrella Movement in 2014: Hong Kong's protests for democracy were on the front pages of newspapers all over the globe and what was supposed to be a pacific protest quickly escalated in riots against police brutal use of force and tear gas. Once the protest was over Scholarism leaders and spokespeople Joshua, Nathan Law, and Alex Chung have been arrested and incarcerated.
ph HERE
This book is Joshua's testimony of those weeks in jail and his plans once he got released and, I have to say this, it has been really hard and scary to read how fast things changed from the Umbrella Movement onwards: before his first incarceration (Joshua went to jail a second time in 2017) he founded the political party Demosisto with Nathan Law, he went abroad to do speeches and lessons all around the world (and had a terrible experience on his way to Bangkok University in Thailand) and kept on advocating for democratic and free elections in his beloved Hong Kong.
The book's final part focuses on a topic that should be known to everybody by now: on June, 9th of 2019 the anti Extradition bill was proposed and lead people to hit the roads and protest once again. This law basically would have given China the power to arrest whoever they thought was a political threat. Even if the bill eventually got withdraw but that didn't stop the protests and lead to terrible acts of violence between protesters and the police.
Although I visited Hong Kong briefly in 2018, that day and a half has been enough to make me love this city to the point it became of one my favorite in the entire world, so it pains me to see its people experiencing such abuse of power from mainland China. The "one country, two systems" was supposed to last until 2047 and by that time China promised, before the Handover, to fulfill some political requests that have been completely ignored.
Unfortunately, we live in a world that's far from being perfect so I encourage everyone to read Joshua's testimony as well as other pro-democracy activists and to step up when you see injustices, whether it be over Hong Kong's self-determination, the fake presidential elections in Belarus, or the anti-government protests in Chile.
To learn more about Joshua and his commitment to the Umbrella Movement I highly recommend you to watch Netflix's documentary "
Ph of the book cover: goodreads.com
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