Hong Kong’s Occupy Central – From Admiralty to FireChat

In late September 2014, the people of Hong Kong embarked on a civil disobedience movement demanding genuine democracy and universal suffrage for the 2017 Chief Executive election. Recently dubbed the “Umbrella Revolution” for its use of umbrellas to counteract pepper spray and tear gas from the police, the Occupy Central movement has captured worldwide attention. Since the Occupy Central movement started, much information has been circulating regarding the various aspects of the protest. This post is an attempt to provide and overview of the major trends relating to Internet and media freedom.

The Occupy Central movement is a culmination of tensions building up since mid-2014, surrounding reforms to the election process for the 2017 Chief Executive, Hong Kong’s political head. Although the Chief Executive is currently elected by a 1,200-member Election Committee, the Beijing Government had declared in a 2007 decision that there will be universal suffrage in 2017. However, Beijing’s position is that the “universal suffrage” will only include candidates who will be pre-approved by a Nomination Committee. Such potential “filtering” of candidates has given rise to significant opposition from the pro-democracy camps (for a legal backgrounder on the Occupy Central movement, see here).

Hong Kong, in addition to being a global financial center, is also one of the most wired places in the world. Accordingly, the Occupy Central movement has been unfolding just as much in the online space as in the streets of Admiralty and Mong Kok.

Social Media and Online Tools

By WAI TUNG YEUNG, Do You Hear The People Sing In Hong Kong 香港人試問誰還未覺醒, via YouTube

Representative of the highly wired Hong Kong society, the use of social media has been at the crux of the Occupy Movement since the beginning. This is perhaps best illustrated by the brilliant adaptation of “Do You Hear the People Sing” from the Broadway musical Les Miserables by an anonymous volunteer. The song has since become an anthem for the movement. Hong Kongers have relied extensively on social media to not only present their cause and win public support, but also facilitate and organize protests. In addition to mainstream social media such as Facebook and YouTube, Hong Kongers have been exploring the use of online tools that facilitate mapping, live-streaming, and file-sharing in collaboration with partners from Taiwan, giving rise to a cross-border Chinese activist community.

Given how critical social media has been for organizing the Occupy Central movement, it is unsurprising that rumors of mobile phone and network service shutdown surfaced almost immediately, and were met with much trepidation. As the rumors spread, download rates of FireChat, an app that allows people to set up “mesh networks,” shot up in Hong Kong, garnering 100,000 new users in a span of 22 hours. FireChat enables a mobile device to function as a small router by using its Bluetooth, WiFi, and peer-to-peer connection. This allows devices to connect directly with one another and also cross-connect to form an independent web, as long as they are close enough to each other (thus the name “mesh network”). Despite well-founded security concerns (for example, any information that travels across the network must be relayed by every intervening device in between), mesh network