So much oppression, but even more pride. And so much foolishness we have to put behind.

2019 has been the second, and deeper, civil society awakening in Hong Kong in recent years - after the Umbrella Movement.

We, the Hong Kong people, had been living in lies for too long, since the day of the handover in 1997; or even earlier - when the Basic Laws were in the making and we chose to believe that the Joint Declaration or "One Country, Two Systems" would be upheld, for at least a good 50 years.

"One Country, Two Systems" is this lie that the local Hong Kong Government and the Central Beijing government have been telling - one that should have been easy to debunk; harder to debunk is this same but another lie that we tell to deceive ourselves - to fool ourselves into believing that economic thrive would buy us happiness, maybe even peace.

Guess what - money only buys happiness to this certain limited extent; we need freedom, the freedom from fear. And justice. And democracy. The freedom from fear of being extradited to mainland China for a non-transparent and unjust ruling, something we have witnessed time and over in the past seven decades. Therefore, 2019 with the threat of the extradition amendment is certainly time for us to come to the realization that lies and self-lies do no good but harm, so are myopia in making socio-economic-political decisions (hark, HK government!)

Of course it has been immensely sad to see the local government, backed by Beijing, being so oppressive and behaving like a dictator, coupled with the police force using so much violence against peaceful protestors, to attempt passing the extradition amendment bill. They are choosing this time, despite its being so close to the 30th anniversary of the Tiannanmen massacre, because this is the time the pro-Beijing camp has the majority vote in LegCo. And the way they push for the bill has been by despicably deploying one tactic of procedural injustice after another - disqualifying pan-democratic camp legislative councillor, calling off the bill committee, and using horrendous violence against peaceful protestors. They are shamelessly bulldozing established institutions based on which Hong Kong's (so-called) "success" is built. There is no doubt that they themselves would suffer from the amendment which pertains to HK surrendering its residual autonomy to dictatorial China with a shady judiciary system.

But all they are doing is inciting the most beautiful civil society awakening since after the Umbrella Movement - and we take so much pride in this. Having learnt from five years ago, this time people have smarter brains to refrain from being divisive among ourselves. Impressively, ingenious division of labour is organically happening - a community on drafting petitions and soliciting support from overseas government; another braving risk of police brutality and keeping encircling the LegCo to ensure LegCo comprises of majority pro-Beijing members does not get to pass the bill in a sneaky manner; not to mention the incredible self-discipline the protestors displays. The unity we show inspires more people to join force, which is further snowballing. There is not a single directing party this time around and the majority if not everyone so far displays incredible judgement of how to stay united and be constructively involved. We care about this topic so much that each of us, individually, are taking charge of our own action and lead this ingenious protest. Such individually organized collective action evidences HKer's quality that should earn us the freedom we deserve. Next thing to contemplate is to make sure that oligarchy will not displace democracy if it ever arrives.

2019 is about 22 years into the 50. Tick tock, the ticking bomb. But there may still be time to turn things around because history never stops surprising us (but most of the time disappointing). And we the Hong Kong people are clearly proving that we have the intellect and stamina to turn things around, hopefully with support from our righteous friends - from abroad, from within the local government, and from mainland China.

We are in pain, but we persevere and we are hopeful.

Written on 12-13 Jun 2019, the day on which the local police used tear gas and guns on protestors.