Right of Arrest Issued for U.S. Citizen.

It was a smuggling operation that helped an estimated 500 dissidents escape to the square as well as from other parts of the country. They smuggled them into Hong Kong and put them in safe houses and then negotiated their safe passage to Western countries.

That does not sound like safe work. Do you understand what your family did? And did you understand the risk of it?

Yes, 100 percent. My dad actually used to take me to the safe houses over the weekend, so I actually got a chance to spend a lot of time with many of the dissidents who were smuggled in from China and to Hong Kong. And I still remember playing soccer on the weekends with some of them on the weekends and watching and listening to my dad, trying to calm them down while they waited for their papers and travel documents.

‘It’s like telling your kids after you the TV and put them before it, that the TV does not exist. “

– Samuel Chu

And how did that shape your perspective?

This is why it does not shock me that an arrest warrant has been issued for me. I recognized the enormous risk and what it cost each of those dissidents, what it cost my family, my parents, my father in particular. And that has been continuous. It’s not just that my dad was there in ’89. Last year I attended my dad’s rehearsal for his role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement. And I was in the courtroom last year when, in Hong Kong this time, they put my father and eight others on trial for organizing protests. So I think there is this very fundamental awareness that this has personal enormous consequences for a family and for the people we know, and that not only can it become life threatening – that you could risk imprisonment – but this affects everyone that we are connected with.

I did an interview last year with a woman who worked as a professor in Hong Kong, and she wrote an essay in which she said in principle: Hong Kong Protestants will lose, but they will have to protest anyway, ‘ t you never know. But it looks like we’re at this wall. Like everything that has happened in the last month in terms of restricting the political speech of people seems so extreme. How do you think that protest will look in the coming weeks and months and years in Hong Kong?

I have enormous respect and confidence in Hong Kongers in Hong Kong because I think you have already seen, even from 2014 and from last year, that there is nothing that Hong Kongers would resist. You’re wrong dead if you think this crackdown will restrict the voices and display of resistance in any way. You already see enormous creativity and resilience from people who invent ways about their displeasure. People walk around holding up blank pieces of white paper as a sign of resistance because they can no longer display slogans or logos as designs. I have absolutely no doubt that the resistance shown over the past year is just continuing. And one of the things the Chinese government in Beijing needs to understand is that this is not like any other crackdown they have ever done. You can not put 7.5 million people, who have lived and breathed in Hong Kong for generations in a controlled environment of Iron Curtain. It’s like telling your kids after you turn on the TV and set them up that the TV does not exist.

You founded the Hong Kong Democracy Council just a little less than a year ago. You have worked in social justice movements for a long time. Why did you feel the need to organize this call at this time?

My career is built on how do you move from grassroots protests to real permanent politics and political influence? How do you build power, in essence, from people who currently have no power?

And your work there in Washington is mostly lobbying, right? Make sure these Protestants in Hong Kong have a voice in, say, Congress.

Exactly. We had to have a permanent presence in DC that could actually translate into the enormous goodwill and inspiration and credibility that the protests in Hong Kong generate. And both translate it and revise it so that it actually directly affects American policy. That’s the part that’s missing. So many people worried about what was happening in Hong Kong and understood and loved Hong Kong. But many of those people just did not know and understand American politics in the same way I did. And so I saw an obligation there to create an American voice for the movement in Hong Kong that proved to be essential in passing actual legislation and not just having photo-ops and protests and rallies.

I was struck by the fact that you founded this organization in the middle of the Trump presidency, because it was in the middle of an enormous reset of our relationship with China. And I wonder if you can talk about the challenges of doing your job right now, in terms of who your partner is and with whom you trust?

I am one of those rare political operatives who have been adamant and very nonpartisan and bipartisan in my career. Hong Kong has always been a bilingual issue. We have managed to maintain overwhelming support for two parties. Recently, we have been pushing for immigration and refugee protection for Hong Kongers in light of the persecution that is now escalating. The fact that we are currently able to introduce bipartisan immigration and refugee legislation into Congress is in itself a miracle – under an administration and in a climate where immigration is still the last thing I think anyone can get support for.

That’s it a bit like my enemy’s enemy is my friend? Because I think I think you have to wrestle here where the administration uses language of fear and nationalism to talk about China. It must be hard to be comfortable with it.

This, to me, is not new. Problems and causes have always been co-opted and exploited by politicians and parties as their way of motivating their base. I’m not a purist or an ideologue. I believe people do the right thing all the time for the wrong reason. I do not need them to do it for the right reason.

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