EDITORIAL: The haunting voices of Hong Kong

Freedom of expression is a precious gift from the times, civilization and history, Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu (韓麗珠) said on Wednesday last week when she received the Golden Tripod Award, the highest honor in Taiwan’s publishing industry, for her novel Flesh Mountain (祼山).

“As a Hong Konger these days, I deeply feel that the freedom to write and publish should not be taken for granted,” she said.

She said that for a reason. Hon, who rarely speaks publicly or accept interviews in Hong Kong because it could result in serious consequences, resigned from her long-running columnist post at the Chinese-language Hong Kong daily Ming Pao earlier this month after two of her articles were rejected in the same week. The editor cited concerns over “sensitive issues.” She called the rejections a “re-education” effort that she refused to accept.

The article, which she on Sept. 10 posted on Facebook, discussed John Berger’s novel From A to X: A Story in Letters, about A’ida and her imprisoned lover, Xavier. She also addressed the independent bookstore raids in July and called for sustained awareness of injustice. Hon said it would be safer to write about “food, weather and cats,” but the happenings in Hong Kong were too painful for her to ignore even though she has been living abroad the past few months.

“A totalitarian regime is not built by one person, but by generations of every single individual who hands over the sides of them that resonate with the regime,” she wrote, adding that she refused to do so.

Hon is not the first Hong Konger to receive the Golden Tripod Award for writing about the struggles of ordinary people in the territory’s turbulent times. In 2024, novelist Leung Lee-chi’s (梁莉姿) The Melancholy of Trees (樹的憂鬱) and poet Liu Wai-tong’s (廖偉棠) The Letter After the Kalpa (劫後書) won Best Literature Book. They were both published in Taiwan.

Flesh Mountain, which was also shortlisted for the Taiwan Literature Awards for Books, follows three “bare lives” after two social movements shook an “empty city” and the lives of two generations. “Bare life,” a concept developed by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, refers to a human existence stripped of all political rights, legal status and social identity. It is human life reduced to pure biological existence, completely exposed to the unchecked power and violence of the state.

When the sovereign power, which has the capacity to declare a “state of exception,” suspends the law, individuals inside that jurisdiction are no longer protected by legal rights. They are placed in a legal vacuum where the state can act upon their bodies with absolute authority.

Hong Kong’s National Security Law, which Beijing forced on the territory in 2020 after a year of democracy protests and unrest, essentially put Hong Kong in a “state of exception.” It bypassed the Legislative Council, which was later filled with “patriots” in an “electoral overhaul,” giving police sweeping new powers and handpicking judges. It allowed for closed-door hearings, trials without juries and a higher bar for bail. These all go against the tradition of common law that has long been observed in Hong Kong, not to mention that the chief executive has been empowered to certify “other offenses” endangering national security, despite the law already broadly defining the four types of offenses: subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts.

Under this state of exception, every member of society is put in a legal vacuum where they are deprived of basic human rights and exposed to the violence of the state apparatus. The territory has become an open prison where state power is left unchecked.

The fire that broke out at the Wang Fuk Court housing complex in November last year, killing 168 people, was a painful example of how unchecked power — amid allegations of collusive tendering, rubber-stamp inspections and unauthorized proxy votes — could reduce people to bare life. No government official has yet been criminally charged for the blaze. Meanwhile, residents said they were not allowed to put up signs calling for Wang Fuk Court to be rebuilt.

Last week’s Mid-Autumn Festival was supposed to be a time for family reunion, and yet, it is an impossible dream for some. As Hon said in her speech, in times like these, when people often feel isolated, connections between people and nations are of utmost significance.