On the eve of my 1,000th day in unjust detention, another injustice is currently taking place in another part of the world. Hong Kong police, no doubt under pressure from mainland Chinese authorities, continue to lay siege on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University where student and youth protesters are holed up while trying to break free from the police siege.
Hong Kong activists fear that this siege is the start of a new level of attack on protesters, probably one even leading to another Tiananmen, as China exerts its authority over Hong Kong and its people.
I express my solidarity with the people of Hong Kong, especially its courageous youth and students, in their struggle for greater democracy and meaningful freedom amidst China’s authoritarian exertion of its control over the autonomous region.
All freedom-loving Filipinos only know too well what the people of Hong Kong are going through. The same demonstration of people power that liberated us from a dictatorship more than 33 years ago is now happening in Hong Kong.
A people thirsting for real democracy, instead of being ruled from Beijing, deserve the solidarity and support of the free world, even those who, like us Filipinos, are again under the yoke of a tyrant who has discarded the rule of law and destroyed our democracy.
As Duterte is to us Filipinos, the Communist Party of China is to the Hong Kong people the authoritarian figure that cannot be allowed to go on suppressing the people’s clamor for freedom and democracy, in what they call the revolution of their time. As witnesses to such courage and passion, we can only stand in support of the people of Hong Kong and tell Beijing that, this time, the world will not allow another Tiananmen. We will do everything in the power of our solidarity as freedom-loving people of the world to ensure that there will not be a Tiananmen in Hong Kong.
Liberate Hong Kong! Never again to Tiananmen! Fight and resist #Tiananmen2019!
