HONG KONG • Among the sea of faces on Hong Kong's streets yesterday were more than 100 people wearing quirky oversized animal masks - a band of activists bringing popular protest Internet memes to life.
Hong Kong's democracy movement is largely leaderless and organised online.
LIHKG, a local Reddit-like Web forum that serves as a virtual command centre for the movement, is filled with memes and a host of animal cartoon characters that have been embraced by activists.
The most popular are a cute pig and a shiba inu dog, which often appear dressed in the movement's ubiquitous yellow tradesman helmets. The other is Pepe the Frog, which carries none of the far-right baggage it does in the West, and is used by Hong Kong protesters as an irreverent symbol of their dissatisfaction with Beijing's rule.
Yesterday, a group of activists joined the crowds wearing colourful Pepe, pig and shiba masks made out of fibreglass, their wobbly heads in stark contrast against a vast forest of umbrellas as the crowds marched.
The stunt was the brainchild of Mr Simon Lau, a former government adviser who has since founded the pro-democracy online radio station Sing Jai. "There is a story of Hong Kong people's suffering behind every helmet," Mr Lau told Agence France-Presse, adding that 117 masks had been made in the past 10 days.
"But in the face of police brutality and tyranny, we want Hong Kong people to carry on with humour, confidence and positive thinking," he added.
Mr Rony Wong, a surveyor in his 30s, was wearing a Pepe mask with a nurse's hat on top, and said he chose the design because he wanted to thank medical professionals who have been helping those wounded in the protests, often in underground clinics. "I believe the medical sector is with the Hong Kong people," he said.
A furniture shop worker who gave only his surname, Mok, was wearing a black Pepe helmet with "1984" on one eye and the Chinese Communist Party symbol on the other. "1984 was the year when the joint declaration was signed," he said, referring to the treaty between Britain and China that paved the way for Hong Kong's handover and guaranteed the city would maintain freedoms unseen on the mainland for at least 50 years.
Hong Kong's protests are fuelled by years of growing fears that authoritarian China is stamping out those liberties.
Mr Sirius Tam, a 21-year-old university student, was wearing a Pepe mask with a bag of "Life Bread" sticking out of the mouth.
The local bakery brand has also become a symbol for protesters after a police officer was filmed boasting that he and his colleagues could go and eat hotpot across the border in Shenzhen while protesters would have to make do with the simple bread.
"What has been stirred up in society the past few months won't simply fade away if the government refuses to solve the problem of systematic injustice," he said.
He added that protesters like him feared that if they stopped hitting the streets, Beijing would only clamp down harder on the city's remaining freedoms. "Then what change will we have achieved?" he asked.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
