The place where Hong Kong's protest movement is mourning for its first martyr is a bleak place. The third floor of a parking garage in the district Tseung Kwan O, raw concrete walls, three empty parking spaces behind flutter tape. Dozens of people ignore the barrier, they stand silently at the parapet, looking down at the floor below, where flowers pile up and folded paper cranes where candles burn. Exactly where on Monday the body of Alex Chow Tsz-lok hit.
"The police claim he jumped because of the tear gas," says a 32-year-old Hong Kong man who only uses his Christian name Ben. He fears problems, because he works in the civil service. Ben says, "I do not believe the police, it was not an accident, someone knocked him down."
Since the beginning of the protest movement, observers had warned of the day the first fatality was due. "I have a sense of foreboding," wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof at the end of August, who witnessed the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen uprising in Beijing 30 years earlier. It is only a matter of time before anyone in Hong Kong is killed, "and that will trigger a new cycle of accusation, escalation and violence."
Hunt before the fall?
The story of the death of 22-year computer science student Chow is still unclear. It is clear that there was a confrontation during the night on Monday in the car park; Activists threw items from the upper parking decks, the police fired tear gas into it. Later, Chow was found on the second floor in a pool of blood. Unconscious, he was taken to the hospital, doctors operated on him twice to relieve a brain swelling. He did not wake up from the coma. Chow was pronounced dead on Friday morning at 8:09.
The civil servant Ben shows a video on his smartphone. Other mourners in the parking garage perform it this evening. Allegedly, a surveillance camera filmed the scene. You can see a young man running through a parking garage and being followed by a taller man. Its dark clothing can be interpreted as a uniform, its headgear as a helmet, possibly a police officer, on the grainy video is not exactly recognizable. He catches up with the young man, pushes him, he stumbles, catches himself and runs on, then the two disappear behind a wall. This is how the recording ends.
The origin of the video could not verify the SPIEGEL, the identity of the persons is not obvious. First of all, it is unclear what happened afterwards. But that does not count for the mourners in the parking garage. You are certain: The video shows a chase that will end with the tragic fall of Chow.
The violence escalates
For weeks, the size of the protests in Hong Kong has been decreasing, but the scale of violence has increased. Radical protesters throw rocks and Molotov cocktails, the police has now used in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets several times also sharp ammunition.
On October 1, a protester was hit in the chest by a police bullet for the first time; On October 13, a protester cut a policeman's neck with a knife so deep that the sergeant sustained permanent damage - one of his vocal cords was injured. Last weekend, a seemingly mentally disturbed assassin bit off a critical district councilor, and on Wednesday morning there was a knife attack on the controversial Beijing-right politician Junius Ho.
Even the dead already mourns the protest movement. Activists have counted at least nine suicides, linking them directly to the political situation. In a particularly tragic case in June, a 35-year-old fell from a height after attaching a government-critical poster to a scaffolding. Chow, however, is the first one whose deaths the activists blame on the security forces.
Some are guided by their anger. In the afternoon, demonstrators invaded the university where Chow had studied. There they disrupted a graduation ceremony, damaged several cafés, the office of the university president and a branch of the Bank of China.
But the evening in the parking garage belongs to the devotion, the silent mourning. Many honor Chow. In the nested parking garage with the low ceilings, their number is difficult to estimate, without a doubt there are thousands upon thousands. In a queue, which winds in many loops over several floors, the crowd slowly and quietly muttering to the place of the fall to lay down white and pale yellow flowers and light tealights.
"He deserves it, this hero of the rioters"
In a corner, someone has hung a cross, under it is a pastor in the black gown. Supposedly, Chow was a Christian. Accompanied by a young violinist, people sing "Sing Hallelujah to the Lord," a hymn of movement. A few times, individuals try to call the now famous battle cry: "Freedom for Hong Kong - the revolution of our day!" But immediately they are silenced by hissing.
In mainland China, this sustained mood was only partially shared. The state media had initially not reported Chows death, but on social media, the news quickly made the round - and was considered with comments that exceeded the limit of human contempt in some cases far. "He asked for it," a user writes on Weibo. "He deserves it, this hero of the rioters," writes another. "Go to Nirvana, where there is freedom and democracy," sneers a third.
It is an expression of how different Hong Kong and Chinese people perceive the protests, how far the realities are already apart. Yet, of course, there are those in the People's Republic who first see human tragedy. "Look at these harsh and inhumane comments," a Chinese Weibo user counters the hate. "Will this country ever be reconciled?"