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Metaphor of Black Masks: Media Confrontation During Hong Kong's 2019 Protests

This is my final paper for the course "Media and Abolition" at the University of Alberta. The creative writing paper incorporates interactive imagery to analyze the interaction between media and political movements, specifically democratic protests.

Category: Seminar Essasy

Keywords: Media Theory; Abolitionism; Digital Interaction

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Technical

Background

The once benign face mask has metamorphosed into an object of "terror".

On October 4th, 2019, the Prohibition on Face Covering Regulation was officially promulgated. The promulgation was jointly issued by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong and the Executive Coun
cil, signifying the will of the Hong Kong government.

A new form of "terror" is taking shape as a stigmatization and counter-stigmatization campaign unfolds around a critical metaphor. The black face mask has become a spiritual totem for protesters in Hong Kong, representing strength and opposition to authoritarianism in the movement. However, for the Hong Kong government, its backers in mainland China, and the supporting state propaganda machinery, the uncertainty brought by the obstruction of the face is disconcerting. The enactment of the Prohibition on Face Covering Regulation marked the culmination of a struggle between destroying symbols of protest and defending the collective demonstration.

"Terror" is not limited to the confrontations on the streets; the media has become its main battlefield. The collective imagery of masks, representing a sense of unity, has been exposed on social media. Protesters have constructed their stance on face masks and facial recognition, while the government and state media have created a moral illusion. The continuous escalation of offline confrontations to the new height of the media age is due to the ongoing battle over the symbolic meanings of face masks and facial recognition technology.

This article takes an abolitionist perspective and, from the view point of late 2019, examines the media symbolization of face masks in the context of the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, while also providing a forward-looking analysis.

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See What's Behind

The three symbols of the 2019 Hong Kong protests are the radicalism of the "brave frontliners", the widespread use of masks and face coverings, and the movement slogans posted on streets and alleys that say "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times."

The combination of blurring of face and visibility of radicalism has become the foundation of the Hong Kong protest movement, imbued with a tone that echoes previous protest movements. 

 

With the rapid growth of biometric technology, identity has become transparent and visible, and the body has become a "threat." Facial recognition technology aims to automate the connection between faces and identities, and enhance the ability to search for individuals among a large population. Some systems can also combine other technologies, such as thermal imaging, motion tracking, and behavioral analysis, to more accurately identify the identity of protesters. In some cases, this monitoring technology is used to identify suspects of violent behavior or to arrest protesters.

 

The precision and abuse of technology have made faces in protests no longer "blurry," dividing the crowd into vivid individuals. This allows for monitoring and police to easily track and lock onto identities, and beyond the act of "arresting in person," filter out individuals from the online system and apply punishment to them. This technology further exacerbates the inequality and oppression in power relations, becoming a means of power expansion and control. It changes the distribution and exercise of police power, and intensifies the disadvantaged position of protesters. The romanticized notion of using the face as the primary means of identification has gradually lost its luster, replaced by a standardized form of facial authentication that serves as a governance model, a quantifiable code, a template, and a measure of management. Against this backdrop, protesters have started evading facial recognition and the struggle to evade technology has become a key feature of global protests.

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The

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Weaponzed

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Faces

In the context of political protests, the term "weapon" refers not only to physical military equipment but also to various tools and means that can be used for attack or defense. In the Hong Kong protests, the protesters' masks, black clothing, and even their bodies themselves have become powerful weapons against authoritarianism. With the help of media, these items have become a formidable force, standing up against the police's arsenal of tear gas, hard shields, and surveillance networks.

 

One crucial point to note is the significant role played by masks and black clothing as surrogates for the protesters' identities, creating a novel collective identity-weapon that blurs facial features and breaks down individual identities. This new weapon is unified, metaphorical, and ambiguous, transcending the fear and rejection of technology and building a spiritual force for collective resistance and local solidarity.

 

This concept is exemplified not only in the actions of the protesters that have applied violence during the protests but also in the measures taken by ordinary citizens in Hong Kong's protests. They emulated the local protesters by donning masks and face coverings to participate in peaceful demonstrations, demonstrating their solidarity and embodying the "Do Not Split" movement. Behind the uniformity of color and clothing lies a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the current political situation, a unity born of fear, and a struggle that transcends mere forms of expression and reaches across class, ethnicity, and beyond.

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A "Legal" Concern

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← See Dark Side

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Governments are striving to re-establish their control over the populace's physical appearance through administrative measures, legal enforcement, and coercive mechanisms such as prisons, police, and surveillance. Governmental authority is utilizing administrative measures, the enforcement of the law, and violent methods such as imprisonment, police, and surveillance in an attempt to regain control over people's faces and bodies. Legislation serves as a disciplinary mechanism aimed at restoring lost order and the representation of authority.

 

The discussion surrounding the prohibition on face covering regulation has escalated in the aftermath of its enactment, with much of the focus on whether the use of emergency powers based on colonial-era laws is constitutional. Eventually, supporters of the protesters successfully overturned the legal implications of the law from this perspective. From the perspective of abolitionism, this kind of discussion within the constitutional framework has inherent limitations. Beyond legal interpretation, the prohibition of masking during legitimate protests constitutes a comprehensive violation of the right to protest. This is because it targets not only individuals who stand up for their rights by protesting, but also all the demands they advocate for, and the collective interests of all citizens impacted by these demands. The legislative measures to suppress the weaponization of protesters' faces attempt to reconstruct order beyond the sites of protests and reflect the government's comprehensive control over citizens' bodies.

 

This overall political atmosphere of anti-mask laws still exists in Hong Kong despite the unconstitutional ruling that overturned this specific law. Through repeated legal amendments and political adjustments, the wearing of masks and even protest activities are gradually being discredited and even eliminated in Hong Kong society. Looking beyond the legal framework, despite the strong spiritual resistance that bodily weapons can offer, they are ultimately weak in political movements, as the state machinery not only employs more advanced violent weapons and technology, but also holds an advantage in legitimacy and morality. Through media, education, and other means, the state reinforces its citizens' sense of lawfulness and moral consciousness, further controlling Hong Kong's society in the post-protest era. The weapon of protesters has become more like a universal "concern": a fear of breaking the law, a fear of authoritarianism, and a doubt of their own physical body.

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The

Media

Confrontation

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As a weapon, masks have become the mainstay and symbol of action in offline protest scenes. In the protests of the era of full media coverage, this atmosphere spans both offline and online scenes, with media becoming the main battleground, and both sides of the struggle using media to construct their own weapons, becoming new tools for violence and even witch hunts.

 

Both sides of the protests constructed their factual positions through descriptive reporting. During the height of the protests in August, Hong Kong media reported on the conflict, mentioning that "police officers were burned by petrol bombs," but did not highlight this incident as a focal point. Instead, the focus was more on "a female student being shot in the eye." A news website in Hong Kong reported from a particular perspective, stating that a woman was injured by an unknown projectile fired by the police, causing her right eye to bleed profusely and she was sent to the hospital. Although the Hong Kong police stated that the woman's injury was still under investigation, China's state-run media outlet, CCTV, posted on its official Weibo account that "a Hong Kong protestor was hit in the eye by her own teammates, which could cause severe vision damage, and yet they still criticize the Hong Kong police." They used the phrase "丢人现眼," which literally means losing an eye, but the idiom is used to describe embarrassing or ridiculous situations in public.

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Despite being surrounded by legal and political pressure, there have still been numerous brave media actions by the abolitionist movement. This encompasses protest media, electronic archives of protests, and maps of police brutality.

The wave of protests first spread across social media, where platforms such as LIHKG (similar to Reddit) and encrypted applications such as Telegram played a crucial role in organizing leaderless protests. These forums were used to share and hunt for information on the personal details of both protesters and counter-protesters, including their names, photos, phone numbers, ages, and professions.

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While the police attempted to identify protesters by using personal information, protesters also shared private information about police officers and their families on Telegram. From June 14 to September 18, the Hong Kong privacy department received 1,376 complaints and 126 inquiries regarding online leaks of personal information.

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Protest media, resembling a protester headquarters or camp, serves as a strategic point for protesters to identify with and seek solidarity. The protesters cover the entire forum screen with black masks and powerful slogans to arouse people's sense of identification with the protest and their responsibility to defend local interests and democracy. The use of masks to cover up the expressions of pain and discomfort in emoticons quickly spread among the local youth, and encouraged more people to participate in the protests.

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China Digital Times

In addition, the text and images of the protest demonstrations have been recorded and preserved as cultural heritage archives. China Digital Times is a digital archive platform dedicated to protecting the records of the Hong Kong protests. It is a bilingual (Chinese and English) news aggregator website based in California, USA, which aggregates information censored on the Chinese internet, as well as efforts by netizens to resist censorship, and provides original analyses, commentaries, and multimedia content on the Chinese society and media environment. The sister site of China Digital Times, China Digital Space, is dedicated to presenting these aggregated information in a curated manner. Its "Hong Kong Pavilion" specifically focuses on the practice of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong and the city's protest movements, as well as the unwavering history of Hong Kong people's struggle.
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ANITELAB Research Data Archive

ANITELAB Research Data Archive is another important archival platform dedicated to documenting the Hong Kong protest movement. It is a project of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. The archive includes various categories such as Timelines, Arrests & Protest Statistics, Mobilization Map, and more, covering all aspects of the protest movement. According to its website statement, the archive aims to provide reliable data resources, original and scholarly sources to support research for political scientists, sociologists, communication scholars, public health researchers, and others around the world. With the support of the exiled media outlet Hong Kong Free Press, this archive has been able to gain a better platform to showcase its content to the world.

Maps also work as an important role during the protests. HKmap.live collects reports on police patrols and tear gas deployment from instant messaging service Telegram and provides tracking information on police operations through messages and GPS locations, allowing citizens and protesters to avoid areas where police may take action. HKmap.live, as a typical form of media resistance, has established a data discourse system for protesters, attempting to challenge the information secrecy and control by large corporations and governments over protest databases and map software.

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See Where
They Are At →

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Although the community-based effort helped with the production and dissemination of the software, the fact that it was hosted on a software platform made it very difficult for users to download and use it freely. Unfortunately, in October 2019, HKmap.live was removed from the Apple App Store due to political pressure.

 

The ultimate failure of HKmap.live seems to suggest a fact: the media battle has never been a synonym for "fair war" or "balanced power." Although the official narrative and the demonstrators' narrative intersect in the media and appear to be evenly matched, the intervention of political power ended this confrontation almost prematurely.

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Post-protest
Era

There are many other professional media outlets facing similar situations as HKmap.live. Media outlets that frequently supported the protesters during the 2019 demonstrations were held accountable after the fact. In July 2020, the National Security Law was enacted and prominent figures such as Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, and senior executives of Stand News were forced to stand trial. In 2021, Jimmy Lai was officially arrested and imprisoned. In 2022, Hong Kong's ranking in the "World Press Freedom Index" by Reporters Without Borders dropped to 148th place. Surprisingly, in 2021, this figure was still 80th place.

Exiled media have increasingly emerged in Hong Kong and abroad, with many setting up headquarters outside Hong Kong in countries and regions such as Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. This includes Apple Daily, Hong Kong Free Press, Stand News, etc.

 

However, despite their presence, these media outlets still face challenges. Some journalists have expressed concerns that although overseas media may not be directly impacted by the National Security Law, readers may hesitate to subscribe out of fear of becoming surveillance targets. As a result, these exiled media outlets often face financial difficulties. Even when based outside of Hong Kong, the National Security Law remains a significant factor that restricts the continued development of these exiled media outlets.

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In Hong Kong, the protests, which were no longer supported by media intervention, became scattered. The symbol of the protest, the mask, has also become blurred due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation of the mask ban became awkward, as the Hong Kong government was pressured by the Beijing government to adopt stricter regulations on mandatory mask-wearing for epidemic prevention, while at the same time fearing the emergence of more masked protesters, which could cause difficulties in tracking their personal information and render the previous laws useless. An agency representing the Hong Kong government announced that wearing masks during legal assemblies is acceptable, but it is illegal during illegal protest activities. This decision was praised by the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office as having "important significance in stopping violence and restoring order" and being "in line with the fundamental interests of Hong Kong society and the vast majority of its citizens."

 

However, the combination of masks as a tool for preventing the virus and as a symbol of resistance against authoritarian government has brought some new dynamics to Hong Kong's street politics. During the pandemic, the visual images and slogans used in protests were reconfigured, and the consistency between political dissent and community efforts to combat the virus led to the following expressions: the iconic protest slogan "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" appeared alongside the "Fight the Virus of Our Times" slogan; after the "Democracy Wall" at universities was prohibited from displaying posters at will, many temporary DIY "Lennon Walls" emerged in local communities, campuses, and city centers, where people exchanged pro-democracy (and some anti-democracy) messages on simple sticky notes.

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This seems to represent a shift in the abolitionist media space, moving from concentrated field outbreaks such as offline demonstrations with two million people and organized protest platforms, to ubiquitous and spontaneous forms of public communication. This new form of public communication can be found everywhere.

 

The nature of protests has shifted from being street skirmishes and tear gas to being slogans on convenience store walls and the occasional glimpse of a black mask on AirDrop on the Hong Kong Subway. Against this backdrop, the protest movement seems to have found a way to remain visible in the public eye: be water. Hong Kong protesters used the term "Be Water" to describe the high fluidity of their protest activities, allowing them to quickly assemble and disperse, then reappear at another location in the city. In the years following the protests, the influence of "water" continued to be felt on various media platforms: technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and online forums made it easy to discuss and spread sensitive events online.

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The Unseen
Future

However, it must be acknowledged that due to the increased presence of patrolling police on the streets and frequent incidents of illegal arrests, Hong Kong in the era of the pandemic has become a state of everyone's self-preservation and no longer daring to express political opinions. In the post-protest era, significant changes have taken place in Hong Kong's social and political environment. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the enactment of new epidemic prevention and control laws have silenced street protests. Public facilities that were once destroyed have been restored by the government, and radical slogans and posters from the protests have been erased. A typical example is the implementation of patriotic education by the Hong Kong government, with textbooks stating that "Hong Kong is not a colony," flag-raising ceremonies introduced in schools, and civil servants required to swear allegiance to the "Basic Law."

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Some individuals and families are opting to flee this city. in 2021, more than 113,000 residents left the area after the easing of the pandemic, resulting in a 1.6% population decrease, the largest drop in Hong Kong's recorded population in over 60 years. Countries such as Canada have implemented policies to accept refugees who fled Hong Kong due to convictions under the new national security law.

In this context, Hong Kong society has entered a state of "terrifying moderation": no one dares to be radical anymore, and there are no longer large-scale protests.

 

In August 2021, the prominent civil society group known as the "Civil Human Rights Front," which was known for organizing the annual July 1 anti-government march in Hong Kong, announced its dissolution, marking the end of its 19-year history. This was not the first civil society organization to disappear under the shadow of the national security law. Amidst heavy pressure from pro-government forces and official media narratives, the space for political voices representing civil society is shrinking.

 

In late March 2023, a somewhat comical scene unfolded as dozens of protesters were required to wear numbered placards around their necks and were prohibited from wearing masks. Under close police surveillance, the protesters, which consisted of 80 people, marched in the rain carrying banners, in what was one of the first approved marches since the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020, despite the fact that the purpose of this demonstration was just to protest against a land reclamation and waste transfer project.

"We need a protest culture with a freer spirit. But everything is planned and numbered, which will only destroy the culture and certainly make people hesitate."

This was what a participant in the march said in the interview. This also indicates the foreseeable future of Hong Kong in the post-protest, post-pandemic era. It is difficult to have "unplanned confrontations" again.

As the pandemic dissipates, the need for protective masks in Hong Kong gradually fades away. With it, the political significance of masks vanishes from the city's history, slowly but surely.

References

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