Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1123376962313587
Opening Session: A Decade on the Streets in Three Places
The opening session of the series marking 35 years since the June 4th massacre brought together Huang Yen-ju (黃燕茹), chief marshal in the chamber during the Sunflower Movement, exiled Hongkonger Fu Tang, and Yang Ruohui (楊若暉), the Chinese youth organizer who founded Citizens Assembly (公民會) in Canada. Over the past decade the three — from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China respectively — lived through the Sunflower Movement, the Umbrella Revolution, the anti-extradition movement and the White Paper Movement. Each spoke about how they came into activism, and all described how those years of struggle for democracy had profoundly changed the direction of their lives.
Speakers
- Huang Yen-ju (黃燕茹): Chief marshal in the occupied chamber during the Sunflower Movement and one of the few women among its organizers, responsible for external communications and for keeping supplies moving in and out. She remained active in social movements afterwards, joining Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in late 2014, and since 2022 has worked as a social worker and administrator at a social enterprise, supporting people experiencing homelessness towards financial independence and recovery.
- Fu Tang: An exiled Hongkonger with no organizational background, active from the Umbrella Movement through the anti-extradition movement. He took part in many large street protests and was the first defendant in the mass rioting prosecutions; after the charge failed, he pursued litigation against the Hong Kong government in search of legal justice, was targeted by the authorities as a result, and left for Taiwan, where he now organizes events on Hong Kong human rights issues and runs civil-defense training.
- Yang Ruohui (楊若暉): Founder and first president of Citizens Assembly (公民會), a Chinese youth and student democracy organization established in 2020, and currently its vice-president and external affairs officer; also assistant editor at China Spring and organization director of the Federation for a Democratic China (Canada). Since the 2019 anti-extradition movement he has taken part in, organized and planned a large number of events in Canada on democracy and human rights in China, and during the White Paper Movement was an organizer in the Toronto area, helping coordinate actions across several Canadian cities.
- Hu Chia-ying (胡嘉穎) (moderator): A member of the Powerless (無力者) collective and a programme officer at the New School for Democracy Association, she has taken part in the Miramar golf course strike, the Nanhui railway Huang family case, the campaign against the Kunyu landfill, and the effort to preserve Penglai House at Losheng Sanatorium, and remains an activist on the streets.