Last week, we had witnessed the biggest single political trial since the Handover in 1997. Gwyneth Ho, one of the 47 defendants, held the most media attention during the bail hearing.

Gwyneth uttered the words “freedom of speech” in court. She was the only one who explicitly rejected unreasonable bail conditions. She was the one who dared to object to bail granted at the expense of personal freedom and freedom of speech proposed by the Department of Justice.

She was indeed very brave. She was so brave that most of us were in disbelief when we heard about what she said in court. In court, people usually fight for their best interests, not anything else. Gwyneth seemed to be completely free from the fear of imprisonment. But who would not be afraid of years behind bars?

If we consider the election, including the primary, and the trial and all proceedings as parts of the movement, rather than being independent of the movement, then her statement is well justified. For her, it is simply the responsibility thrust upon her by this era, and she does not shy away from it. From the time she considered running for office, to actually running for office, she had been well aware of the possibility of imprisonment. As the probability of being held behind bars increased, her response was the same along the way—she knew she would be put in jail sooner or later, but she could not go to jail for nothing. This is something we discussed one year ago when preparing for her campaign. And indeed, this is bravery and a great achievement in itself.

We have witnessed many people, faceless or not, living out their beliefs over the past 18 months. We are, or can be, one of them. Gwyneth is clearly one of them. This is of course a virtue we should praise and celebrate, but we somehow seem to be thinking that we cannot do that ourselves. As Gwyneth wrote in her article after the mass arrest on January 6, “I still want to believe that there are hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong who understand the truth of Hong Kong and all the costs and still haven’t given up. I don’t think I’m the one who is given encouragement, but seen as one of the many who is. I’m also the one that makes you wonder ‘how you can persevere’,.”

Harry Potter in the magic world is perceived as ‘the boy who lived’, and he is packaged by all the wizards and witches as a hope against Voldemort. But in the books, we have seen it takes more than someone cheering on the chosen one to destroy Voldemort and fight the Death Eaters. It requires more people to do more.

I think what Gwyneth is looking forward to is not so much the ‘cheers’ or the ‘respect’, but how we can move forward with her choice of living in the truth, not burying the memories of the movement, not denying the possibilities of ourselves, not giving up on the imagination of the future, not forgetting the goodness and beauty that we have witnessed together over the past years.

(Glacier Kwong, born and raised in Hong Kong, became a digital rights and political activist at the age of 15. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Law and working on the course for Hong Kong in Germany. Her work has been published on Washington Post, TIME, etc.)

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