i was gonna write a proper thread about my thoughts after the rally for yuli but its all messy and angry and sad and defeated and disappointed

i have never cried so much at a rally. but today i was so overcome with shame and guilt and pain at the plight of migrant domestic workers that i just wept and wept

i can’t express my thoughts and feelings fully here, but there are a few things i want to say. bear with me — they will be disjointed and half-formed

a speaker said, “we can tell the quality of a society by seeing how it treats its most vulnerable.”

hong kong…hong kong, what have we done? what are we doing?

we ask these human beings to care for our children while tearing them away from their own. we give them half a salary, reasoning that “to them it’s already a lot”. we expect them to live in our homes, but we refuse to allow them citizenship.

the system hurts them, keeps them in fear and robs them of their freedoms; we stay silent. we dont even want to SEE how they are suffering.

and when they are in trouble, we give them 5 seconds of screentime before we forget them

i understand that today’s event, which was wonderful and poignant, was planned under extremely short notice. i will accept that as the reason why the turnout was so low.

but hong kong! it’s not just today. it’s every single day we live in this city. our support for migrant domestic workers — where the fuck is it?

hong kong, if we are to judge our society by how we treat these most vulnerable, we are failing

i know im too impatient. i wanted people to show up in hordes as a sign that we HKers have been radically changed over these last 6 months.

i know thats impossible i know, but still a part of me screams, how are we so apathetic about this level of injustice?

yuli called in today, from indonesia. her message was full of gratitude and grace. she thanked HKers for their support. she asked us to continue to fight for her siblings: migrant workers in HK

i cried again, in shame

a woman who was locked up because she tried to tell the story of a people who have done nothing but treat her people like second-class citizens — she thanked us

she thanked us and we are so undeserving of her thanks

yuli herself did not go into the details of her time in (wrongful) detention.

her friend did. she told us how yuli, on the first day she had visitors, was haggard and withdrawn, refusing to talk about her experience in the cell

with a lot of coaxing — her friend trying to hold her hand through the glass — yuli described how she had suffered humiliations and deprivations at the hands of her captors

as a muslim woman, she was forced to disrobe for an examination by a male doctor. her appeals for a female doctor fell on deaf ears.

no hot water. no medical attention. bad food. she was yelled at for playing with tissue paper out of boredom

yuli also described how others in detention were suffering. they had been there longer than her 29 days, and some were in terrible mental health

i am NOT comparing her plight with frontliners’.

but while HKers in police custody at least know about their 48hrs and then of their sentencing, those held by immigrations have no idea how long they will be trapped in the cell

imagine just waiting and waiting in these terrible condition, not knowing when it will end

yuli said that some ppl she met inside told her they preferred actual HK jails to being in the CIC

in jail they knew when their sentence was ending. in jail they had better food, better accommodations. in jail, more people visited

i cried, again

speakers at the rally described other cases of people trapped in the CIC. there are a lot of other injustices that migrant workers suffer, even out and out in larger hk society.

there’s so much that we aren’t seeing — that we refuse to see.

hong kong

i was somewhat cheered by the number of HK people who went on stage to speak on behalf of migrant workers. these were people who had spent years working with them, helping them, befriending them — seeing them as real people

im glad for the efforts of those who have already seen this injustice and who have already stepped out to take concrete action!

i dont want to belittle what they’ve done, because it’s so important

but this can’t be enough, hk. this is a good start, but this is nowhere near enough. it is my fervent hope that this 6month movement isn’t just for us yellow-skinned East Asian HKers

i hope it lights a fire in us so that we try to fight injustice in every corner of our society

i know we can’t change immediately. and i know we have pressing concerns

but i say again: we CANNOT leave people by the wayside in our crusade for human rights and justice and freedom

near the end of the rally, two SE asian ladies knelt down hopefully next to me.

“thank you,” said one of them in Cantonese. “we really thank HKers for supporting Yuli."

ofc i cried immediately. so therefore she cried immediately. we just kind of sat there for a few seconds, tearing up at each other.

she continued. “it’s encouraging that HKers care for us so much."

“in our country, there are indonesians who are angry at yuli. they slander her on the internet.”

i remembered this; i saw a horrifying tweet full of FB comments calling Yuli terrible names

“i can’t believe that our own countrymen hate her, but HKers support her"

i don’t know what i replied i was obv crying.

but then this SE Asian migrant worker said, clearly, “democracy is so important. without democracy, we cannot fight injustices like this. we need democracy. HKers, you cannot give up."

and she’s right! we need to keep fighting for democracy.

but not only so that we can live in freedom — it’s also so that we can fight these injustices head on

these days i find myself crying every day. i think maybe i’m trying to crusade for too many different causes at the same time. but by god, how can i not? all of these are important, so so important

HKers, all i ask is that we remember the vulnerable and sidelined while we wage our war against injustice. we don’t have to be perfect, but we are not allowed to make excuses before we even try to fix things

next time, i want more HK voices speaking out for migrant rights. i want more people defending the vulnerable in our society.

i want to be able to look yuli and that earnest lady in the eyes and say, in honesty, “thank you for your work! we HKers will always fight for you"

Hkers, i believe that we are can be better. we need to be better. and we cannot give up — because we are fighting for more than ourselves! we are carrying the hopes and dreams of those who depend on us, too

next time we have a rally like this, we better fucking fill the venue

i guess i did end up making a thread after all theres a fuck ton i still want to say but i’ll leave it here for now

fuck! fucking hell. im still so angry and ashamed. we must be better. we owe it to ourselves to be better people, too

128, see you all in victoria park tmr!

ALSO omg sorry i forgot to say this bUT our support for yuli and migrant domestic workers should not be contingent on what they’ve done for us! we don’t support them bc they’ve helped us — we support them bc they are humans, they are HKers, and it’s the right thing to do