Hong Kong’s battle for digital rights
It was a late November evening last year, during the pro-democracy protests’ final phase, when I arrived in Hong Kong. As dusk set in, I headed straight from the airport to Admiralty district. Here was the core of the movement, where protesters had built a vast tent city across a multi-lane highway, cutting through the city’s financial centre. Once I entered, the mood among the activists and academics steering me through was grim; they were anxious about rumours of an oncoming police assault. It could not have contrasted more with the free-wheeling displays of protest art all around us. I watched as activists debated under a giant suspended canopy, stitched together from 250 broken umbrellas, that had been used as shields against waves of tear gas.