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 man pulled Chiu shut in a belligerent embrace, sank his enamel 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 Communist Party. Chiu continued his activism, campaigning and making public appearances with a big bandage overlaying the left facet 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.
One of essentially 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 contributors flip to radical ways akin to violence and vandalism, however Hong Kong’s motion was remarkably coherent. On the streets, “Brothers climbing a mountain together, each one with their own effort” grew to become a well-liked chorus. Another was extra easy: “Do not split.”
Four 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 would see the majority of the town’s most outstanding prodemocracy advocates jailed, the place the penalty might be as much as life in jail. He is amongst quite a few opposition figures who’ve swapped sides and at the moment are 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 publish speeches of Chinese President Xi Jinping on social media. Plenty of editors from the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper will possible testify in opposition to their outdated boss, the media tycoon Jimmy Lai, later this yr, 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 University, in Australia, whose analysis focuses on authoritarianism, informed me. Flipped witnesses assist governments “sell the story that the movement is not worth supporting because of its criminal underpinnings,” and so they plant the concept that “current acquaintances can become future informants,” which may deter participation in demonstrations.
“These testimonies effectively put pressure on the level of trust between potential collaborators,” he stated, “making citizens doubt the political relationships they rely upon.”
Chiu, who pleaded responsible, supplied 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 ultimately drive the chief government to step down by blocking the town’s price range. The prodemocracy motion held a major to decide on the preferred attainable candidates.
More than 600,000 metropolis residents voted within the unofficial major over two days in July 2020. But quite a few candidates who took half had been disqualified from standing within the election, scheduled for that September. The metropolis’s chief then used a colonial-era regulation to postpone the polls, citing the specter of the pandemic. When the elections had been held the next yr, that they had been reengineered to make sure that solely “patriots” might take part and to supply an opposition-free legislature.
Chiu was certainly one of 47 folks, 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. According to dozens of pages of testimony reviewed by The Atlantic, Chiu, who was a longtime member of the Democratic Party, Hong Kong’s largest prodemocracy political celebration, has solid himself as a principally 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. News of it comes at a time when Hong Kong’s prodemocracy motion is at its nadir throughout the metropolis, world consideration to the town’s plight is waning, and activist teams overseas have fractured by means of infighting.
The metropolis’s authorities, in the meantime, have recast the 2019 demonstrations as a violent, foreign-backed “color revolution” and search to snuff out its recollections and erase its talismans. They have shifted focus to what the federal government describes as “soft resistance,” a nebulous time period that encompasses seemingly any exercise that expresses dissatisfaction with the facility construction. In courtroom, the federal government is hoping to attain an injunction that may prohibit the printed, publication, or distribution of a well-liked protest anthem. Police earlier this month issued arrest warrants and a bounty of about $130,000 for eight activists who’re residing overseas, within the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The eight stand accused of violating the national-security regulation, which has world attain, and John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief government, has referred to as them “rats in the street.”
“In a city once known for its vibrant and diverse public square, no one feels comfortable sharing critical or even lightly satirical remarks or cartoons about the government in public, or sometimes even among friends in private,” Johannes Chan, the previous dean of regulation on the University of Hong Kong, wrote in a latest essay inspecting the influence of the national-security regulation after three years.
Chiu was politically bold. In 2007, he was elected as a district councilor, changing into one of many metropolis’s youngest, at 22. His drive grated on some throughout the prodemocracy camp, in response to an in depth pal, who, like others I spoke with, requested anonymity to be able 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 sexy goal for cooperation, his pal informed me: “He became weak. Once you give in … the pressure will be greater and greater. And you will concede more and more.”
“It is very sad,” a lawyer concerned within the case informed me lately. “I understand why they have done it; no one wants to stay in prison any longer than they need to.” Chiu and others possible hope that cooperating will spare them the harshest jail phrases, and beneath Hong Kong’s common-law courtroom system, a holdover from British rule, pleading responsible in a prison case would usually have this impact. But beneath the national-security regulation, which melds the town’s common-law heritage with Beijing’s authoritarian judicial system, the conviction price for national-security circumstances is 100%, and the benefits of cooperation will not be clear, as a result of there is no such thing as a precedent or case regulation.
The worth of Chiu’s testimony to the federal government’s case is clear. 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 has to be the first conspiracy ever in the world where everyone involved was telling anyone what they were intending to do,” the lawyer informed me lately. Testimony from Chiu, in addition to others like Au Nok-hin, a Ph.D. scholar and former prodemocracy lawmaker, provides a nefarious behind-the-scenes animation to a publicly identified plan with claims about its planning and intent. “The whole case rests on those witnesses,” the particular person acquainted with the case informed me.
Although the usage of such ways is a brand new, and ominous, improvement in Hong Kong, it’s widespread elsewhere. Beijing has lengthy used pressured 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 aircraft carrying him was pressured to land in Minsk, earlier this yr 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 kind of therapy he could have been subjected to whereas jailed is unclear.
Testimonies from former members of opposition actions are “designed to reveal, mitigate, and fracture,” Lee Morgenbesser informed me. They dangle over the motion, the place “the very presence of informants sows distrust among key members and disrupts future plans.”
The bounties Hong Kong has positioned on the eight abroad activists serve an identical function. Given that the nations during which these activists reside have suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong, the decision for his or her arrest is principally about displaying political muscle and inflicting psychological harm. The metropolis’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 “bring disaster to their loved ones,” 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 “climate of distrust and denunciation,” the place “the government focuses citizens’ attention on what it alone identifies as being dangerous 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. Other defendants have at occasions brazenly heckled him, scoffed at his testimony, and referred to as him names within the courtroom. His pal informed me that when Chiu is freed, he’ll possible want to go away Hong Kong. His testimony has been disjointed and at occasions utterly at odds along with his previous acknowledged political positions. Even the panel of judges handpicked by the chief government to deal with the case have at occasions appeared annoyed and exasperated along with his ever-shifting narrative.
The lawyer concerned within the case informed me that Chiu’s flip has been so full, making full sense of it’s tough. He is, the lawyer stated, like “someone who used to smoke, but now can’t stand the smell of smoke anywhere near him.”