Hong Kong-related vandalism was discovered outside of The Daily Free Press and adjacent whitestones on Friday. Respectively, they read “Journalists Shot – Veby Indah Doxxed – Ronson Chan Groped – Jasmine Leung Jailed – Sophia Huang by [Hong Kong] Police” and “10.1 Never forget never forgive.”
Although the ongoing protests have spanned for nearly a year, they seemed to have left the minds of many. Without the same degree of Western media coverage the protests once held, we have moved on from one of the most important moments of 2019 and perhaps even this century. We’ve become infatuated by another Asia issue, the 2019 coronavirus, while Hong Kongers continue to risk their lives in the streets to this day.
If the aim was to redirect attention to this issue, these vandals certainly accomplished that with the strategic word and location choice. The juxtaposition of writing “journalists” in front of The Daily Free Press office likely caught the eyes of normally-apathetic onlookers. Without research, the vandalism seemed to attack the publication itself — or journalism more generally.
That being said, the ambiguity of the graffiti is cause for concern, although most likely a publicity stunt. While the onus does fall onto observers to interpret, the message should not be so unclear that it appears to regard something mostly unrelated to the conflict taking place in Hong Kong. It wasn’t immediately clear that the overarching sentiment wasn’t anti-journalist.
The vandalism, the most recent of three pro-Hong Kong vandalism incidents on campus, undoubtedly had a permanent impact on the way the Boston University community is thinking about the protests. It is this quality then that underscores the importance of a clear message.
Without coverage and efforts on onlooker’s part to understand it, the vandals’ intended message easily could have been misconstrued or entirely lost in a sea of rumors. In that sense, the vandals squandered the potential to garner support — if that was, in fact, the intent.
While The Daily Free Press does not endorse vandalism, this was not an entirely unproductive act of resistance. BU Facilities Management and Operations spent a significant portion of Friday cleaning it off of the sidewalks. The administration’s relatively informed awareness around the issue trickled down into the student body. In addition to the clean up, The Daily Free Press covered the event, dissipating necessary background information to understand the context.
BU Administration and its students should not be casting this off as ineffective and criminal. We here at The Daily Free Press stand in solidarity with the journalists on the ground who have been injured and silenced while trying to share information about a movement that will undoubtedly change the course of history.
We have allowed ourselves to forget about what is taking place internationally because it is no longer occupying a space on the front pages of Western media outlets. Perhaps this is what the vandals were trying to remind us of by placing their message somewhere we can’t avoid.
