Silver linings amid fear, anguish

CONFLICTING IMPRESSIONS

While capturing images of protesters with his camera in Hong Kong on July 1, Japanese researcher and scholar Junzo Aoyama was forced to delete photos. As his camera was snatched and smashed, he felt for a moment that his life was threatened.

"They said I can't take photos, as they are not good for the students," Aoyama said in a blog on Shukan Gendai or Modern Weekly, a Tokyo magazine put out by Kodansha, the largest publishing house in Japan. He was told such photos could get protesters in trouble.

Aoyama said the protesters allowed only permitted media to take photos, and no one else.

An American journalist "rescued" him from the protesters. "It seems protesters are not so harsh on Westerners," the 71-year-old Japanese man wrote.

Aoyama is an entomologist who has been using Hong Kong as a transit point for the past 30 years for his study trips in southwest China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. He stayed in Hong Kong between June 12 and July 2, getting a sense of what was happening there.

Aoyama said he used to like Hong Kong very much, but the recent incidents had left him with "an unpleasant feeling".

"They (protesters) are trying to convey the impression that they are victims," Aoyama added. Nonetheless, on Aug 13, Fu Guohao, a 28-year-old reporter from China's tabloid Global Times, was tied up and verbally and physically abused by protesters at Hong Kong International Airport.

Aoyama wrote, "I think it is necessary to carefully examine what is happening behind the so-called justice that the Hong Kong protesters are advocating."