Andrew Chiu, a prodemocracy district councilor in Hong Kong, was making an attempt to cease a knife-wielding assailant from attacking protesters in November 2019 when the attacker broke free and lunged at him. The person pulled Chiu shut in a belligerent embrace, sank his tooth into Chiu’s left ear, then snapped his head again and, as Chiu reached as much as discover blood spilling from his head, spat a sinuous chunk of flesh onto the brick sidewalk.
An try and reattach Chiu’s ear was unsuccessful. He spent 19 days within the hospital recovering. Later, throughout his attacker’s trial, Chiu gave testimony recalling the grotesque “pluck” sound he heard as his appendage was ripped from his head. The assault fleetingly elevated Chiu within the leaderless prodemocracy motion, his ordeal held up by protesters for instance of the viciousness of supporters of the Chinese language Communist Occasion. Chiu continued his activism, campaigning and making public appearances with a big bandage masking the left aspect of his head till he was arrested in 2021 for violating the national-security regulation imposed by Beijing.
Then Chiu did the inconceivable. He flipped.
Probably the most notable traits of the 2019 mass demonstrations in Hong Kong was their unity. The motion drew tens of millions of protesters from disparate age and socioeconomic teams. Prodemocracy politicians, too, put apart long-running variations. Social actions are inclined to splinter when some individuals flip to radical ways equivalent to violence and vandalism, however Hong Kong’s motion was remarkably coherent. On the streets, “Brothers climbing a mountain collectively, every one with their very own effort” turned a preferred chorus. One other was extra easy: “Don’t break up.”
4 years later, Beijing hasn’t solely silenced dissent and wholly restructured China’s freest metropolis. It has additionally managed to crack this unity. Chiu, who’s 37, is a key witness for the federal government in a sweeping trial that might see the majority of town’s most distinguished prodemocracy advocates jailed, the place the penalty may very well be as much as life in jail. He’s amongst plenty of opposition figures who’ve swapped sides and are actually aiding the federal government they as soon as fought. Three others charged within the case have additionally cooperated, with one going so far as to submit speeches of Chinese language President Xi Jinping on social media. Numerous editors from the now-defunct Apple Each day newspaper will probably testify in opposition to their outdated boss, the media tycoon Jimmy Lai, later this 12 months, as will two different younger males who the federal government alleges are a part of a tentacled conspiracy that casts Lai as mastermind of the protests.
Hong Kong affords an instance of how authoritarian regimes globally, from Belarus to Beijing and past, work to crush common actions from the within, turning onetime supporters into collaborators to sow discord, fracture unity, and stoke uncertainty. The results are demoralizing and discombobulating for many who watch their former compatriots transfer in opposition to them and the broader actions they as soon as supported.
The tactic is twofold, Lee Morgenbesser, a comparative-politics professor at Griffith College, in Australia, whose analysis focuses on authoritarianism, advised me. Flipped witnesses assist governments “promote the story that the motion shouldn’t be price supporting due to its felony underpinnings,” and so they plant the concept that “present acquaintances can change into future informants,” which might deter participation in demonstrations.
“These testimonies successfully put stress on the extent of belief between potential collaborators,” he stated, “making residents doubt the political relationships they depend upon.”
Chiu, who pleaded responsible, offered greater than two weeks of testimony this spring, centering on his function in an unofficial prodemocracy major vote held in 2020, days after the national-security regulation was handed down from Beijing. The vote was a part of a brash plan, devised by a former regulation professor, to hold the protest motion from the streets into formal halls of presidency. The hope was that prodemocracy candidates would safe a majority within the metropolis’s legislature, the place they might vote down payments and finally pressure the chief govt to step down by blocking town’s finances. The prodemocracy motion held a major to decide on the preferred attainable candidates.
Greater than 600,000 metropolis residents voted within the unofficial major over two days in July 2020. However quite a few candidates who took half have been disqualified from standing within the election, scheduled for that September. Town’s chief then used a colonial-era regulation to postpone the polls, citing the specter of the pandemic. When the elections have been held the next 12 months, that they had been reengineered to make sure that solely “patriots” may take part and to provide an opposition-free legislature.
Chiu was certainly one of 47 individuals, together with legal professionals, labor activists, and pro-LGBTQ advocates, arrested for standing within the major and charged with conspiracy to commit subversion. Most have been held with out bail since February 2021; 31 have pleaded responsible. In response to dozens of pages of testimony reviewed by The Atlantic, Chiu, who was a longtime member of the Democratic Occasion, Hong Kong’s largest prodemocracy political celebration, has forged himself as a largely hapless bystander who went together with what the federal government describes as a secret, sinister scheme. In actuality, the ballot was a easy train in democracy.
The collaboration of Chiu and a number of other others has incensed and dejected activists and onetime buddies. Information of it comes at a time when Hong Kong’s prodemocracy motion is at its nadir inside the metropolis, world consideration to town’s plight is waning, and activist teams overseas have fractured by means of infighting.
Town’s authorities, in the meantime, have recast the 2019 demonstrations as a violent, foreign-backed “coloration revolution” and search to snuff out its reminiscences and erase its talismans. They’ve shifted focus to what the federal government describes as “smooth resistance,” a nebulous time period that encompasses seemingly any exercise that expresses dissatisfaction with the ability construction. In courtroom, the federal government is hoping to attain an injunction that can prohibit the published, publication, or distribution of a preferred protest anthem. Police earlier this month issued arrest warrants and a bounty of about $130,000 for eight activists who’re residing overseas, in the US, the UK, and Australia. The eight stand accused of violating the national-security regulation, which has world attain, and John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief govt, has known as them “rats on the street.”
“In a metropolis as soon as identified for its vibrant and various public sq., nobody feels comfy sharing crucial and even evenly satirical remarks or cartoons in regards to the authorities in public, or typically even amongst buddies in non-public,” Johannes Chan, the previous dean of regulation on the College of Hong Kong, wrote in a latest essay inspecting the impression of the national-security regulation after three years.
Chiu was politically bold. In 2007, he was elected as a district councilor, turning into one of many metropolis’s youngest, at 22. His drive grated on some inside the prodemocracy camp, in line with a detailed good friend, who, like others I spoke with, requested anonymity with a view to keep away from attainable repercussions. Chiu yearned for the limelight and felt slighted when he was not given the eye he thought he deserved and didn’t transfer up the political ranks as shortly as he anticipated. These resentments made him a horny goal for cooperation, his good friend advised me: “He turned weak. When you give in … the stress will probably be higher and higher. And you’ll concede increasingly more.”
“It is extremely unhappy,” a lawyer concerned within the case advised me not too long ago. “I perceive why they’ve carried out it; nobody needs to remain in jail any longer than they should.” Chiu and others probably hope that cooperating will spare them the harshest jail phrases, and below Hong Kong’s common-law courtroom system, a holdover from British rule, pleading responsible in a felony case would usually have this impact. However below the national-security regulation, which melds town’s common-law heritage with Beijing’s authoritarian judicial system, the conviction charge for national-security instances is 100%, and the benefits of cooperation will not be clear, as a result of there isn’t a precedent or case regulation.
The worth of Chiu’s testimony to the federal government’s case is obvious. Over the course of the months-long trial of the 47 major candidates, prosecutors have used the defendants’ social-media posts and public statements as proof of conspiracy. “This needs to be the primary conspiracy ever on the planet the place everybody concerned was telling anybody what they have been meaning to do,” the lawyer advised me not too long ago. Testimony from Chiu, in addition to others like Au Nok-hin, a Ph.D. pupil and former prodemocracy lawmaker, provides a nefarious behind-the-scenes animation to a publicly identified plan with claims about its planning and intent. “The entire case rests on these witnesses,” the particular person acquainted with the case advised me.
Though using such ways is a brand new, and ominous, growth in Hong Kong, it’s widespread elsewhere. Beijing has lengthy used compelled confessions to splinter actions on the mainland that it perceives as threatening. Roman Protasevich, the Belarusian activist who was arrested two years in the past when the airplane carrying him was compelled to land in Minsk, earlier this 12 months secured a pardon from the dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko. Opposition activists have accused Protasevich of betrayal and collaborating with the federal government he as soon as fiercely criticized. What sort of therapy he might have been subjected to whereas jailed is unclear.
Testimonies from former members of opposition actions are “designed to disclose, mitigate, and fracture,” Lee Morgenbesser advised me. They dangle over the motion, the place “the very presence of informants sows mistrust amongst key members and disrupts future plans.”
The bounties Hong Kong has positioned on the eight abroad activists serve an analogous function. Provided that the nations by which these activists reside have suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong, the decision for his or her arrest is principally about exhibiting political muscle and inflicting psychological harm. Town’s authorities have already arrested 5 Hong Kongers accused of aiding the activists and, adopting one other mainland tactic, questioned the household of 1. Having contact with the exiles will “carry catastrophe to their family members,” and making them pariahs will harm their “mobilization capabilities,” Lau Siu-kai, an adviser to the federal government’s in-house suppose tank, wrote in a latest state-media opinion piece. Authorities are making a “local weather of mistrust and denunciation,” the place “the federal government focuses residents’ consideration on what it alone identifies as being harmful to the state,” Morgenbesser stated.
Chiu has earned a particular animus amongst his former colleagues within the democracy motion by being sneering and spiteful of his onetime compatriots. Different defendants have at instances overtly heckled him, scoffed at his testimony, and known as him names within the courtroom. His good friend advised me that after Chiu is freed, he’ll probably want to depart Hong Kong. His testimony has been disjointed and at instances utterly at odds together with his previous said political positions. Even the panel of judges handpicked by the chief govt to deal with the case have at instances appeared annoyed and exasperated together with his ever-shifting narrative.
The lawyer concerned within the case advised me that Chiu’s flip has been so full, making full sense of it’s troublesome. He’s, the lawyer stated, like “somebody who used to smoke, however now can’t stand the odor of smoke wherever close to him.”
