The latter scenario might not sound nightmarish, but democracy activist Chu, 43, knows what it symbolizes: his dread of being separated from his daughter if he eventually goes to jail. The first embodies his other major fear: being exiled from Hong Kong.
Overnight, the previously unthinkable became reality: traditionally peaceful rallies were banned, some Facebook posts were criminalized, uttering certain phrases became illegal, the legislature lost almost all its democratic figures, and dramatic scenes unfolded of Hong Kongers trying to flee by boat and seeking asylum.
The stakes in agitating for democracy exploded. Activists have been dealt a brutal hand: stay in Hong Kong to risk being jailed alongside icons Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Jimmy Lai, as well as hundreds of others lacking name recognition, or flee to a democratic safe haven to exist in self-imposed exile far from the people and places that have been the physical and spiritual touchstones of their lives.
Chu faces 11 charges for various bursts of democracy activism over the past 13 months, and believes he’s looking at two to three years in jail. Chu says he will stay to serve any sentence he is handed: “You can’t play the first half of the match and not stay for the second.”
A two-pronged movement is now in full swing. Within the exiled group there are myriad beliefs, strategies and even opposing personalities. And while they have avoided jail, interviews with seven exiles for this piece show their lives are not simple: even abroad, they watch over their shoulders, communicate on secure apps, and fear the slightest contact with people in Hong Kong could endanger those they left behind.
The contours of escape
After Baggio Leung was released from a month-long stint in a Hong Kong jail in September, during which he says he was mostly held in isolation, he believes someone began following him. “Usually, this is a bad sign. It means you are in the sights of the regime again,” says Leung, 34, the former leader of Youngspiration, a political party that called for Hong Kong independence — the idea that most riles Beijing, and one that is now illegal under the new security law.
For days on end in the weeks after, he says he avoided going to his apartment, sleeping elsewhere to try to throw them off his tail. But that wasn’t the only curious hallmark of surveillance on his radar. Leung says his personal cell phone’s 6 gigabyte data allowance suddenly drained in one day. “That’s…
Read More: Hong Kong’s democracy activists: The exiles and the inmates