She was one of the youngest defendants linked to a youth group calling itself the “Returning Valiant”, marking the first case in which minors were sentenced under the sweeping national security law that China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.
Beijing said the law was aimed at suppressing dissent after massive, sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests rocked the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city in 2019-20.
After nearly four years in custody, Kelly walked free this April to an unrecognizable city.
“Everything feels unfamiliar,” she said. Local cafés, small shops, familiar corners – all had disappeared or been replaced by new ones that seemed almost foreign. “The Hong Kong I knew is gone.”
His days are now in a calm rhythm. She works part-time in a café, sees a psychiatrist once a month, and tries to sleep through the night without waking up, drenched in sweat. “Sometimes I dream that people are chasing me, shooting from the roof. When I wake up, I look at the door, the window – just to make sure they are not here.”
The sounds of the city she had returned from were like a memory she could not escape. “I can’t breathe when there are too many people.”
Many of his old friends are gone; Others avoid him. “Some people don’t know what to say. Other people are scared.”
Kelly keeps her head down – avoiding slogans, old friends, anything that might attract attention. He has learned to speak less, to weigh his words carefully. “Even laughter sounds different now.”
The silence with which he has learned to live is now shared by the city also.
In 2025, as the government completed five years of the national security law being in place, arrests slowed but controls deepened.
New education initiatives monitor students’ online speech, while candidates for district-council elections must pass loyalty reviews, and former prisoners – though technically free – describe living under unseen surveillance.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the government announced plans to install thousands of AI-equipped cameras across the city by 2028 — part of a “SmartView” network that officials say will enhance public safety. For many Hong Kongers, it feels like an extension of that system, Kelly said.
There seems to be more pressure on Joker Chan.
He served five months in prison for seditious online posts – phrases and slogans shared at a time when expression still seemed possible. Since his release in 2022, police have stopped and searched him hundreds of times. “You come out thinking you’ve paid your dues,” he said, “but society keeps charging you interest. It’s like they’re reminding me every day – you’re never really free.”
His tattoos, once a symbol of strong faith, now distinguish him on the street. “Sometimes they just stare,” he said. “Sometimes they ask questions that have nothing to do with anything.”
Kelly and the Joker’s stories are different, but their lives are based on the same pattern.
One lives with the burden of memory, the other with suspicion. For both, release is not an end but a continuation – freedom is measured in caution, in silence, in the interval between seeing and being seen.
When the judge sentenced the returning Valiant defendants, he wrote: “Even if they provoked only one person, Hong Kong’s social stability and the safety of residents could be seriously endangered.”
He acknowledged there was no direct evidence that anyone was provoked, yet called it a “real risk” to justify the punishment. In that logic lies the essence of the city’s new order: the very idea of danger has become a crime. This action did not end with the prison; Just its form changed.
Some choose to start new lives elsewhere – but for Kelly and Joker, staying has become a small act of bearing witness, a quiet testament to history. “Leaving feels like it erases everything we’ve been through,” Kelly said.
She lives for her family, for those still inside, and for the fragments of the city where she once lived. The Joker lives on, too, his past imprinted on his skin as a burden and memory – a record of what cannot be said out loud. “This is my home, my street, my story.”
Edited by: Srinivas Majumdaru
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