The Jarring Reality Hong Kong’s Dissidents See From Jail
Earlier this month, I stood in line alongside an aide to Tam Tak-chi, both of us readying to meet with the imprisoned political activist at the Hong Kong prison complex where he is being held. As Tam’s assistant waited her turn for supplies she brought for Tam to be inspected, a woman approached from the nearby waiting area and the two exchanged excited hellos before hugging and chatting briefly. The woman was the friend of a man facing charges under Hong Kong’s sweeping national-security law, like Tam. With so many of the city’s prodemocracy figures and protest participants now jailed, these types of run-ins aren’t uncommon, the aide explained to me. Visits sometimes turn into small reunions, chances to check in on one another, swap updates on respective cases, and scoff at the authorities’ latest steps to reengineer Hong Kong.
The misleadingly named Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre holds a number of prominent prodemocracy advocates. Tam, who is also facing, has been kept there, largely in solitary confinement, since September, making him a sort of elder statesman. (An failed on Monday.) Before his arrest, Tam very much embodied Hong Kong’s legacy of brash and boisterous protest: He manned street booths while bellowing at police through a megaphone, and once dressed up as a to mock a high-speed rail line linking Hong Kong and the mainland. Even after the national-security law was imposed last year, he kept demonstrating.
