That was my first rally ever. (I grew up in Singapore – I suppose that says a lot.) I joined the Filipino migrant workers in the rally as a photographer, an ambivalent role that made me part of them yet not exactly part of them, a perfect opportunity for practising participative observation.
I went to Chater Road at 10am. It was a bright and warm day despite it being almost Christmas. Chater Road was already filled with activity. Closest to the Old Supreme Court Building (which is at one end of Chater Road), a group of Filipinas were dancing - I later asked one of the members of UNIFL (United Filipinos in Hong Kong, an alliance of Filipino grassroots organisations in Hong Kong) what they were doing. She said they were just doing exercise and if I wanted to join them, I could. I found Dorothy busy setting up a booth in front of Chanel for a movie screening later in the afternoon (the first time I met her at the other end of Chater Road she was packing up equipment for a movie screening earlier). She told me I was free to hang around the area, watching them.
While Dorothy and the others were setting up booths, laying banners on the roads, setting up the sound system and testing the microphone and loudspeakers, I strolled further along Chater Road and found the
Democratic Party of Hong Kong having their own activity at the other end.
A truck with a huge banner featuring the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-yin, with huge words ‘Step Down’ written across it was parked in front of one of the exits of Central MTR (the equivalent of the tube in London) station. Someone who appeared to be joining the activity organised by the Democratic Party of Hong Kong walked past the booth set up by Dorothy and her friends with a piece of paper stating, 'Leung is a liar' and told them the same in English.
Three policemen in uniform and one plain-clothes policewoman later arrived at the scene and discussed the route for the protest march with Dorothy. They appeared friendly and knew exactly whom they needed to approach for the discussion. They left the other members to do whatever they needed to do before the rally and were taking notes, chatting among themselves and sometimes working on their smartphones. They looked relaxed and the Filipinos who were getting ready for the protest march seemed not to mind them at all.
The members of UNIFIL continued with their setting-up and the groups who were dancing in front of the Old Supreme Court Building continued to do so. The Democratic Party at the other end of the Road also carried on their activities as usual. Shouting about ‘stepping down’ from one end of the road collided with music from the other end of the road while Dorothy and her friends also tried to speak to the protestors to get themselves assembled and ready for the protest march. It was a space of contrast and interesting juxtapositions: Filipino migrant workers having fun versus Filipino migrant workers getting ready for protests on the one hand, and Filipino migrant workers protesting versus local political protesting on the other, all within the space of Central’s luxury shopping with retail outlets of Chanel, Max Mara, Cartier and other international brands, and of course the Tiffany Trees.
The protest march started from the booth in front of Chanel. The protesters marched via the Old Supreme Court Building towards Chater Garden. Before the protest march started, policemen signalled to the leader of the dance group in front of the Old Supreme Court Building that the march was about to start. The leader of the dance group stopped the music and the group stepped inside Statue Square to leave sufficient space on Chater Road to allow the march to go through. At the time the march started, a booth was also being set up by the Hong Kong Women's Association for a charity sale of second hand clothes and toys. Chater Road was apparently big enough to accommodate the various activities and the Filipinas mingled between the spaces of the booth for second hand goods and the Christmas Trees set up by Tiffany, taking pictures of others dancing in the road. They also danced in the roads themselves and cheered members of UNIFIL on as they marched by.
The procession stopped for a while right in the middle of Chater Garden to ensure that everyone followed. Then it stopped again before the traffic lights between the Bank of China Tower and Chater Garden. Not everyone in the procession managed to cross the road within the time duration of one green light; one of the policemen stopped the traffic from going through in the middle of the road and another one ensured that everyone in the procession crossed the junction before the last policeman waved the cars to go behind him. The police seemed to be the facilitators of this small (in terms of the number of protesters) protest march and their concern seemed to be primarily to ensure that the protestors were not run over by traffic.
Stopping the traffic before the protesters crossed any major junctions was their most important job (at least it seemed so to me).
The same thing happened again at the junction leading towards Pacific Plaza. Before the procession crossed the small junction, one policeman stopped in the middle of the road to stop the cars going by - interestingly, he managed to stop a Rolls Royce from going through. The picture of a junior police officer stopping perhaps somebody important (apparently the Rolls
Royce was driven by a chauffeur - an elderly man was sitting in the back and his face looked vaguely familiar) to allow a long stream of Filipino domestic workers, who on weekdays disperse into the households of Hong Kong families and on this particular Sunday, the day before International Human Rights Day, were raising the issue of the violation of human rights back in their homeland to the wider public – to their own community right here in Hong Kong, the passers-by, the Chinese tourists and the locals – in the hope that they will become aware of the dire situation from which some of them have managed to escape, was beyond my expectations. I did not react quickly enough to capture the scene but the image was impressed upon me.
Along the way, someone with loud speakers shouted slogans such as 'stop the killings in the Philippines' and 'end of impunity', and the members followed.
The group was then led onto the escalators provided by Pacific Plaza (a shopping mall cum office development) to cross the big junction between Pacific Plaza and the Lippo Centre on the opposite side of the street. There is no pedestrian crossing for the ground floor of this big junction. The space is taken up by taxi stands, a bus terminus and MTR exits. Pedestrians can only move about in these areas through the elevated walkway. So the march entered the private space of the shopping mall through two panels of transparent glass doors. One of the policemen held the door open for the group and signalled for the shouting and chanting to be stopped. The protesters obeyed and quickly followed through the glass panels. It was apparent now that we had entered a different realm of governance in which shouting and chanting and any acts of protest were not allowed.
As the march went through the spaces from the streets to Pacific Plaza and up the escalator, the group was "greeted" by a security guard in the mall. He stood at the top of the escalator through which the march had to pass and watched the march continue northwards to leave his territory. In
between Pacific Plaza and Queensway Plaza (another shopping mall!) is an elevated walkway that connects to the tram stations on ground level. The group was then led by the police down to the ground floor using the staircases provided by the MTR, and one security guard was seen standing right at the entrance of the Queensway Plaza. His symbolic act of standing in between the public space (the elevated walkways) and the private space (the shopping mall) spoke of the expected behaviour of anyone entering 'his space': everyone shall enter as quiet and passive consumers, not active citizens. Once the group had reached the ground floor, the shouting and chanting began again.
The Philippines Consulate in Hong Kong is located in one of the commercial buildings in Admiralty. There is no public square for demonstrations but a tiny strip of pedestrian passageway that allows pedestrians to enter the bus terminus right behind the commercial building. The protest group was stopped outside the building, forming lines right at the entrance of the commercial building. Again, a security guard was observed standing at the entrance. As the tiny space of the pedestrian walkways was not sufficient to accommodate everyone in the group, some had to cross the road to occupy the public garden on the other side. Policemen used bright orange tape to form a soft line to which the group had to adhere to allow a single file space for pedestrians heading to the bus terminus or the MTR station. There was also tape set up right in front of the building, signifying the border beyond which the group could not enter. Some of the group leaders, however, stood on the stairs leading up to the entrance, but outside the panel of glass doors, to speak to the crowd.
The engines of the passing buses muffled the shouting and speaking. I wondered whether anyone was in the Philippines Consulate. There was no press following them. No-one from the host society seemed to be interested in the issues of these domestic workers. They live intimately with the Hong Kong households, yet the host families know next to nothing of the
background stories, which force so many women to leave their families behind to tend to others. I did not either, before the protest march.
It was a small group of people consisting only of Filipinos. They posed no threat, either in terms of the size of the group or the issues they were protesting about. Extrajudicial killing or human rights violations in the Philippines seemed remote and abstract in the space of Central with policeman facilitating the protesters to cross big and small junctions and everyone (the police, protesters, and security guards in various capacities) knowing their place and acting accordingly.