There is a silk thread tens of thousands of kilometers long that has linked the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Pacific Ocean and the Donbass trenches to the umbrella protest in Hong Kong in recent weeks.
“Russia is like China and freedom must be defended everywhere”: John speaks the tones of the obvious, he’s almost amazed when asked why he decided to join the Foreign Legion, and inside he’s angry about whatever still happened in his village. Like him, other Hong Kongers would also fight on the front lines. Dressed in jeans, a wool hat, an army green Tshirt and a tactical backpack, he arrived at the Polish border at Medyka in order to cross the border and enter Ukraine. In contrast to its size, only the almondshaped eyes reveal its oriental origins. John is 45 and works as a photographer.
“This time I had to leave cars and lenses at home, I only have the bare essentials inside: a few clothes and some Krations,” he explains. He is here to fight, convinced that his fellow citizens have already taken Kalashnikov rifles against the Russian columns. “And others will have to do it, because in a way it’s our business too, it’s the same axis of the oppressors.” And while resting his hands on a pocket, he recalls that “freedom from the other twin giants, China that supports Putin is being trampled on. In Hong Kong, which was once a place of democracy, there is no longer a right to speak your mind: the problem is that it is an infinitely smaller place than Ukraine, which is why we forget each other. And he remembers the arrests, the suppression of demonstrations, the censorship of the internet, the shutdown of social networks and the ban on cinema films. Just a few months ago, Chinese security forces forced the independent newspaper Stand News to shut down after more than 200 agents raided the newspaper’s editorial offices on charges of “seditious publication.”
“Perhaps Putin is even less dangerous than the Beijing government: you can still write in Moscow and social networks are still active,” he says. On the other side a soldier awaits, sprawled in his chair, smoking, tired, sheltered from the rain under a muddy tent with the black word “Legion” written on it, made up of a spray that will soon fade. The new soldier, on the other hand, is quickly approaching, ready to join a new Ukrainian “palyanitsa. He will soon show his personal record of the resistance, which has so far only been about the passive fight of umbrellas against pepper spray and tear gas.
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