Читать книгу Hong Kong in Revolt - Au Loong-Yu - Страница 15

Hong Kong emerged from the Umbrella Movement as a deeply divided city. The divide encompasses two main camps: the yellow camp, who are pro-Umbrella Movement, and the blue camp, who oppose it.

On top of this was that Beijing, through the Hong Kong government, now took frontal attack on Hong Kong’s autonomy and its opposition parties by:

• Prosecuting the student leaders of the HKFS and the occupation trio

• Disqualifying eight pan-democrat and localist lawmakers

• Enacting direct intervention on every level of elections in Hong Kong, especially the CE election

• Abducting Hong Kong-based publishers who put out books on China, and specifically on Xi Jinping’s private life (the ‘Causeway Bay Books disappearances’ case)

Making things worse was that the nativists now continued their offensive not against Beijing but against the HKFS. The small groups of xenophobic localist students in different universities immediately initiated a teoi lyun, a campaign to call for the withdrawal of their respective students’ unions from the HKFS through a student referendum. To justify their attack on the HKFS they now put all the blame for the failure of the Umbrella Movement on the latter. Eventually the four most important students’ unions withdrew and dealt a heavy blow to the HKFS. The once passionate youth now descended into passivity. If Beijing had not tried to table the extradition bill there might not have been the 2019 revolt.