cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/54418042

Archived

In 1940, Otto and Elise Hampel, residents of Berlin, furtively distributed postcards into mailboxes. “What have we become? A flock of sheep!” they wrote on the back. Hitler, by then in power for seven years, had already dismantled democratic institutions, abolished civil liberties and suppressed all opposition. For two years, until their arrest in 1942, the couple – who would be sentenced to death and executed – wrote 285 cards, a paltry task, to challenge the ruthless regime they faced. Their story would inspire the German writer Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin, a narrative published in 1947 based on Gestapo archives and regarded by Primo Levi as “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis.”

Resistance, however fragile it may be, still exists in autocratic regimes of all kinds, which tolerate no dissent. How do you live in your own country with the feeling of being alone among your own people?

[…]

Sometimes, since moving to England, Qi Hong gets a little bored. While he enjoys the peace and quiet of the small town where the British government sent him after he applied for asylum, he has little to do other than language classes, which are essential to his future in the country. He avoids joining any other activities and keeps his distance from the Chinese community. That is the price to pay for making such a public statement. At the end of August 2025, in the suburbs of Chongqing in central China, a slogan appeared in white Chinese characters, projected across six floors of a 20-plus-story building: “Down with red fascism, overthrow communist tyranny!” Set up in a hotel room just opposite, a powerful projector beamed out several other messages: “No more lies, we want the truth; no more slavery, we want freedom.” Qi, a 43-year-old electrician, meticulously prepared his plan before leaving the country with his wife and two daughters. After gathering all the necessary equipment, he rented a hotel room at the perfect height and conducted a few tests using innocuous phrases. Nine days after he left, he remotely activated the projector. The slogans remained on display for about 50 minutes, until five police officers burst into the room and unplugged the equipment. In a video, a young officer, visibly at a loss, can be seen glancing toward a corner of the room, at a camera recording the scene. Qi had planned everything: For once, it was a dissident watching the police.

Here is a video report about Qi Hong (3 min, alternative Invidious link).

[…]

Besides the camera trained on the façade and the one placed in the bedroom, a third recorded his mother’s house, a small wooden shack in the lush countryside of Sichuan. The police made sure to pay her a visit, according to a video released the following day. Then, his close friends and more distant acquaintances were questioned by the police in turn: “Even uncles I never saw,” Qi said with a nervous laugh.

Reached by video call, Qi, […] recounted how he became politically aware when, as a young migrant from the countryside, he faced police harassment in major cities, followed by his decision to leave the country and the secret preparation of his protest performance. No one, not even his wife, knew, he insisted. “I did everything by myself to protect my family.” His brother was detained for about two weeks, and his nephew, to whom he was close, was held for several months.

[…]

In [the Italian city of] Milan, Li paused to glance at his large-screen iPhone resting on the Café table. From time to time, he was contacted through a group chat on a secure messaging app. The group he manages, funded by donations, often chooses to discard a post if its source can be identified too easily. Some contributors have already been arrested in China. “We warn them, but generally the people who write to us are aware of the risks,” Li explained. Since 2024, even followers of the “Teacher Li” X account have been summoned en masse by the Chinese police.

He lowered his voice as an Asian person sat down nearby. The activist chose to change seats. His home has been put under surveillance, and his apartment has been visited by members of the Italian mafia on a contract job, who sprayed his door with paint. “That day, I thought I was going to die,” he said. His online accounts are targeted by hacking attempts several times a week.

“We do not want a revolution – I am all too aware of the risks of chaos – but I hope that China can become a peaceful democracy. To achieve that, people need to be educated about their rights and civic life,” he said, lighting another cigarette – he started smoking in 2022 to cope with the pressure. “Repression creates a sense of isolation. But there are more dissidents in China than people think.”