The Campaign for Hong Kong

10/19/2026

From Tiananmen in 1989 to the Umbrella Movement in 2014 to Hong Kong's National Security Law in 2020, the struggle for democracy has been shaped by more than the people whose names we know.

It has depended on strangers willing to trust one another, take risks, and act together.

In his essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Campaign for Hong Kong's Samuel Chu draws on his family's history, underground escape networks, and decades of organizing to explore how those relationships become the foundation of collective action.

Strangers into Collaborators:

Operation Yellowbird, the Umbrella Movement, and the dissidents of Hong Kong.

10/07/2026

The Hong Konger Promise of Refuge Act would give qualifying Hong Kongers protected by Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) a path to permanent residence—a green card—in the United States.

The bill is not law yet, but it offers something Hong Kongers living under temporary protection have needed for years: a path to stay.

Temporary protection has given Hong Kongers safety. This bill could give them a future.

Here’s what Hong Kongers need to know. ↓

10/06/2026

For five years, Hong Kongers in America have been told: You are safe here — for now.

That “for now” matters.

DED has protected thousands of Hong Kongers from being forced back into the hands of the government they fled. But temporary protection is not a future. And with DED set to expire in February, that uncertainty is becoming very real again.

Today, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Jim McGovern introduced the Hong Konger Promise of Refuge Act, which would give eligible Hong Kongers protected by DED a path to permanent residence.

This is what we have been asking for: not another temporary reprieve, but a durable home.

After Tiananmen, America gave Chinese students here a path to stay. Hong Kongers who stood for freedom and now call America home deserve that same promise.

No one should be sent back to face the government they fled.

Thank you, Senator Merkley and Congressman McGovern, for standing with Hong Kongers. Now Congress needs to act.

Washington, D.C. – Today, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and U.S. Representative James P. McGovern (MA-02)—Ranking Members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)—announced the Hong Konger Promise of Refuge Act, new legislation to provide protections for Hong Kong res...

09/22/2026

As we prepare for Continues this week, reposting this piece from on transnational repression and our capacity to organize together.

"I often tell organizers: Go where you are not allowed."

The cancellation of RightsCon 2026 demonstrates the growth of transnational repression and the fragility of the contemporary human rights ecosystem.

09/21/2026

We are joining Continues.

The threat to digital rights continues. The work of our community continues.
And so does RightsCon on September 22.

The RightsCon Continues Summit will take place online across the globe on September 22.

09/13/2026

Let her dad come home.

Jimmy Lai’s daughter: I have cancer at age 30. https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/jimmy-lai-daughter-claire-cancer-fxwm2sljm

09/13/2026

READ---> How Does a State Disappear a Person? Notes from my first day of teaching via Michelle Kuo https://ampleroad.substack.com/p/how-does-a-state-disappear-a-person

Notes from my first day of teaching

09/11/2026

Hong Kong has sentenced Lee Cheuk-yan to 7 years, Chow Hang-tung to 7 years and 3 months, and Albert Ho to 5 years and 2 months in prison.

I was eleven years old in May 1989 when I stood in the pouring rain among a million Hong Kongers marching in support of the students in Beijing. My father was one of the founders of the Hong Kong Alliance. Lee and Albert worked alongside him for decades; Chow belongs to the generation that carried that responsibility forward.

The Alliance remembered Tiananmen. It demanded accountability. It called for political prisoners to be freed and one-party rule to end. Every year, tens of thousands gathered in Victoria Park to light candles and say, “We remember.”

That memory became organization. And organization became power.

That is what the government has spent the last five years trying to destroy: the vigil, the Alliance, June 4 in public life, the Pillar of Shame—and now more years of the lives of the people who carried that memory forward.

Lee, Chow and Albert did not advocate violence. What made them dangerous to this government was the power of people who remember together, organize together, and reject the idea that one-party rule must last forever.

These sentences do not measure what they did. They measure what the government fears.

09/02/2026

Joshua Wong was 14 when he began campaigning for democracy in Hong Kong. He became one of the movement's most recognizable faces while still a teenager.

He has now spent most of his twenties behind bars.

Today, the 29-year-old pleaded guilty to a new national security charge of conspiring to “collude with foreign forces” over his efforts to win international support for Hong Kong's democracy movement.

Joshua was approaching the end of his current prison sentence. Instead, Hong Kong charged him again for conduct dating back to 2020.

What much of the world called free speech and advocacy, Hong Kong now calls a national security crime.

Joshua Wong should be free.

08/29/2026

Who is Albert Ho?

Albert Ho is a veteran Hong Kong human rights lawyer and democracy leader who spent decades advocating for democratic reform in Hong Kong and China. A former legislator and Democratic Party chairman, he also led the Hong Kong Alliance, which organized the city’s annual Tiananmen vigils for more than three decades. Alongside Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, Ho was convicted of inciting subversion over the Alliance’s advocacy, including its call to “end one-party dictatorship.” All three now await sentencing.