HongKonger Community Center in Northern California held an event with Amnesty International on Nov. 10 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the award-winning film “Ten Years.”
The event in Castro Valley, featuring a screening and a panel discussion, called attention to the plight of Hong Kong’s political prisoners and urged continued international support for the city’s democracy and freedom. Nearly 100 people from across California attended.
Released in 2015, “Ten Years” is an anthology of five short films by different Hong Kong directors. Each imagined the city’s future from a different angle under tightening control from Beijing.
At the time, many saw the work as dystopian fiction. A decade later, many say the reality has surpassed the film’s darkest predictions.
‘Reality Is Much Worse’
Former Legislative Council member Sin Chung-kai, who attended the event as a panel speaker, told The Epoch Times that when he first saw the film, he thought it exaggerated Hong Kong’s possible decline.“I didn’t think Hong Kong would ever become that bad,” he said. “But ten years later, reality is much worse than what the movie showed.”
He said Hong Kong is now undergoing a second wave of emigration, as more than 300,000 people are believed to have left.
“This is the second major exodus of Hongkongers—likely larger than the one between 1990 and 1996, before the 1997 handover,” he said.
He said it remains to be seen how many Hongkongers will have left by the time the current wave ends.
He added that most democratic parties and civic groups in Hong Kong have been forced to disband this year under pressure from authorities.
Beijing Isolating Hong Kong
Eric Lai, senior fellow with the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said rewatching “Ten Years” serves as a stark reminder of the freedoms Hongkongers once had.“The authorities are tightening control over Hong Kong, suppressing press freedom, and cutting off its international connections,” Lai said at the event. “Beijing wants to isolate Hong Kong from the international civic society and human rights groups and turn it into just another inland city in China.”
1,900 Prisoners
Joey Siu, spokesperson for Amnesty International’s Hong Kong Overseas chapter and moderator of the event, said more than 1,900 political prisoners are now detained in Hong Kong.“Their situations are extremely difficult and deserve global attention and support,” she said.
Siu told The Epoch Times she was a child when she first saw “Ten Years” a decade ago. Now living in exile in the United States, she said the film remains emotionally powerful.
Suppression of Culture
Attendee Shi Chun-ying compared Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong’s culture and language to the tactics of the Japanese occupation during World War II.“Back then, the Japanese banned local languages,” she said. “Now the [Chinese Communist Party] is doing something similar—pressuring Hongkongers, especially the next generation, not to speak their own language.”
At the end of the event, participants posed for a group photo holding flyers that read “Free Lee Cheuk-yan” and “Free Chow Hang-tung.”
Both Lee Cheuk-yan, former Legislative Council member and vice chairman of the Labour Party, and Chow Hang-tung, barrister and former vice chairwoman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, remain behind bars as political prisoners. Each has been detained for more than four years.
