…
https://time.com/5628021/roy-kwong-hong-kong-protests/
..
..
..
..
https://twitter.com/lcm_hk/status/1176513247257587712?s=20
..
..
..
..
..
Excerpts from:
Whenever There’s Trouble He Rushes There.’ Meet Legislator Roy Kwong, the God of Hong Kong Protests
In a narrow office, just across the bay from mainland China, sits the God of Hong Kong Protests.
Roy Kwong, a social worker turned politician, is fielding back-to-back interviews while writing a column about the police response to discontent flaring in the city this summer. He’s due for a live radio call in 15 minutes.
The 36-year-old legislator appeared on the front lines soon after the mass marches kicked off in June, when he heard police were conducting random searches at train stations. He rushed to the scene to offer assistance to young protesters and has been a fixture at the demonstrations ever since, always ready to fire off three rules of engagement at the crowd through his megaphone: don’t get injured, don’t spill blood, and don’t get arrested.
Kwong has vowed to safeguard the teenagers thronging to the streets in a rebellion against Beijing’s choke hold on the semi-autonomous enclave. No one, he says, should “have to pay the price of their youth.” Whenever police phalanxes ready fresh volleys of tear gas, Kwong puts himself in front of the protesters, trying to buy time for a retreat. When the leaderless movement loses steam, he channels his hero, Abraham Lincoln, and delivers extemporaneous speeches. Before a protester fell to his death from a mall last month, Kwong was there, begging him to come down.
Kwong’s dedication—he even passed out from exhaustion in front of a protest bloc—has earned him something the Hong Kong government is direly short on: trust. It’s also made him Hong Kong’s most popular lawmaker. Rarely do politicians inspire spontaneous applause by mere presence, but that’s how young people in Hong Kong respond to him. They’ve nicknamed him “God Kwong.”
“Whenever there’s trouble he rushes there regardless of whether he’s sick or tired,” says Kung, a 25-year-old protester. “We call him a god because he seems like he’s mighty.”
Before he emerged as the tutelary deity of student protesters, Kwong built a reputation as a prolific romance novelist, producing work with such titles as The Appearance of Regret and There Is a Kind of Happiness Called Forgetting. (He remains an author to this day, with his latest tale We Are Togetherappearing just this week.)
.
“The most important thing right now is to fight this battle well. It’s not over,” concludes God Kwong, pledging to continue watching over his flock. “I think everyone has their mission in life. Me? I have to do this thing.”
Call it divine purpose.
—Additional reporting by Aria Hangyu Chen and Hillary Leung / Hong Kong
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
weehingthong 