Eva's Story in Her Own Words

Eva Schloss (second to the left), posing with young hosts last night

This is Eva Schloss (nee Geiringer) who is 90 years old. She is a survivor of the holocaust, and is in Hong Kong this week to talk to mostly students about her experience in the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

She spoke last night at the Asia Society to a packed house mostly filled with secondary students who asked some good questions and she answered every one of them.

Schloss spoke to a room filled mostly with students

Schloss has a connection to Anne Frank. The two were the same age, Schloss a month older, and they played together from when they were 11 to 13 years old, when their families went into hiding in 1942.

She remembers Anne as a storyteller with a vivid imagination, a chatterbox and a young flirt. Later after the war, Schloss lost her father and older brother, and she and her mother re-connected with Anne's father, Otto Frank; subsequently Schloss's mother married Frank. So in a way Schloss became Anne's step-sister... if she was still alive.

In May 1929, Schloss was born in Vienna, and when Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, Schloss's family moved to Belgium and then eventually the Netherlands in 1940, where she met Anne.

Schloss's family went into hiding in 1942 in seven different places, but two years later they were betrayed by a Dutch nurse who turned out to be a double agent for the Nazis. She was awarded 5 gilders for every Jew arrested. She betrayed 200 people.

Schloss when she was young, before she was arrested

When they were captured, the men and women were separated and that was the last time Schloss saw her father and brother, while she and her mother managed to stay together throughout their entire ordeal in the concentration camp.

After they arrived, they were immediately inspected, the young and old were immediately taken away and gassed. Schloss's first miracle was that she wore a wide brimmed hat and coat so that at first glance the Nazis couldn't tell she was young.

But the conditions in the camp she says were horrific. There were eight people per bunk bed so you could barely move and the beds were covered in bed bugs and lice. That led to lots of scratching and the bugs would suck on the blood of the open wounds...

They were forced to wake up at 4am or 5am for roll call, stand outside with no coat or hat (their heads were shaven) and stand for two hours while names were called out. If anyone was missing, the roll call would start all over again and they stood there for another two hours.

Anne Frank's father Otto later became Schloss's stepfather

"If you moved, you were beaten," she said matter-of-fact. And the roll call happened everyday. Then breakfast consisted of "some liquid of soup or sour milk the Nazi soldiers didn't finish" and that was it, and the work began.

The women did heavy labour, like road building, digging, carrying rocks around. "Our heads were burned because our heads were shaven. We were not allowed to talk and we had no lunch," Schloss explains, and no toilet breaks either. "You were just trying to stay alive."

At 9pm they finally returned to the barracks and supper was a big piece of bread. "You couldn't keep the bread, you had to eat it, because there was no where to keep the leftover bread for later. If you tried to sleep with your bread and it fell out of the bunk, someone else would eat it."

It was like this everyday and Schloss explains they didn't know the day or the week or even the month, but could guess from the seasons. They were constantly starving.

Sometimes they would wake up with a dead body next to them -- Schloss had to carry out a few corpses during her time. "You'd wonder if it would be me tomorrow, and I had nightmares about it. Their eyelids were still open, because they were frozen."

Schloss remembers Anne as a storyteller and flirt

One time during a roll call, Schloss's mother was chosen to go to the gas chambers, and Schloss thought that she had lost the will to live losing her mother. But somehow thanks to luck, her mother managed to avoid death and be reunited with Schloss until they were liberated by the Russians on January 27, 1945.

Afterwards she and her mother managed to get back to their home completely broke, and realized soon after that her father and brother were dead. Her mother was very practical and rented out a room in the home to two women, and she also got a job as a secretary but she didn't know how to use a typewriter at all. She would bring home stacks of paper that she had ruined with mistakes, too scared to throw them out in the office.

As for Schloss she went back to school, three years behind, and then went to the UK to study photography, where she met her future husband, Zvi Schloss at the boarding house they both stayed at. They went on to have three daughters and now have five grandchildren.

However, after the war, Schloss was very depressed and angry. She could not listen to German, refused to visit Germany. She also was disillusioned about her religion. She had been taught that Jews were the "chosen ones" and yet God did not save them from the concentration camps.

Schloss signing a book for a young fan

Today she will go to synagogue periodically and is passionate about being Jewish, but is not very religious.

"After the war I was more depressed than when I was in the camps," Schloss says. It was Otto Frank who told her to try not to be so angry. "Otto told me to go out and see there are wonderful people in the world."

He was very proud of Anne's diary and showed it to friends who encouraged him to publish it, though it took him a while to decide to actually do that. It is now published in 70 languages, and even the bookstore around the corner from their home is also famous, as it is where the diary was bought as a birthday present to Anne. The diary was bequeathed to the Dutch government after Otto Frank died in 1980.

For decades Schloss didn't speak about her experiences, not even to her own children. It wasn't until 35 years ago that she attended a traveling exhibition about the holocaust in London, and Otto Frank had passed. At the event Schloss was asked to speak and she was terrified. But she started talking and realized it was a relief for her to talk about her experiences, releasing the feelings she had suppressed for so many years.

Eventually she wrote a book, Eva's Story and three others to ensure her life was documented. "I had nightmares all the time, but after I wrote Eva's Story, the nightmares stopped," she says.

She refused to travel to Germany but eventually went there again for holocaust events. After hearing her experiences, young children asked her, "Will you ever forgive us?"

Schloss realized the children had learned what had happened and understood what the Nazis had done. "I will never forgive your grandparents, but you are innocent," she replied.

In subsequent visits and meetings with other people involved in the war that some people were forced to become Nazis -- Schloss learned they did not want to kill people but were following orders. She blames propaganda for making people get so caught up in the movement.

One student asked Schloss what she thought of the Japanese refusing to apologize for the atrocities they committed against the Chinese during World War II.

She said that the Japanese had not learned their lesson yet, unlike the Germans. Schloss also praised Angela Merkel for taking in 1 million refugees into Germany, unlike other European countries that refused them.

What kept her going in the concentration camp? She says it was her stubbornness and hope. "You can't live without hope," Schloss says.

True that.

Dogs Versus Cockroaches

Protesters call the police "dogs", while the police call protesters "cockroaches"

During the protests in Hong Kong that are sliding into the seventh month, the police and protesters have called each other names.

Right from the start when police were being heavy handed, protesters began calling them 狗 "dogs", a derogatory way of calling them not human. Police cars are called "dog cars" and police stations are "dog houses".

Some graffiti at the police station or "dog house"

Protesters have even thrown dog food at police.

Meanwhile a few months ago some police officers began calling protesters, volunteer medics and the media 蟑螂 or 甴曱 "cockroaches" which is hardly complimentary.

While it's also dehumanizing, it's several levels below a dog...

It may have started in a letter in August written by the chair of the Junior Police Officers Association, which denounced protesters as "no different from cockroaches".

For history buffs, this is similar to World War II, when Nazis called Jews rats, and Hutus involved in the Rwandan genocide called the Tutsi minority cockroaches.

 Chief inspector Tam Yu-hei says "cockroach" is a compliment

Earlier this week, on the RTHK program Hong Kong Connection, chief inspector Tam Yu-hei referred to the insults traded between protesters and police in these past seven months.

"Aren't cockroaches full of vitality and can survive in times of difficulties?" he argued.

When it comes to protesters using the word "dog", Tam says they police would rather see it as meaning loyal and obedient, adding his colleagues in the force were very professional and vowed not to be hostile towards anyone.

Uh-huh.

However in a regular press briefing, Tam's superior Superintendent Kwok Ka-chuen conceded: "It is not ideal to label a group of people as cockroaches. Tensions have risen between police and protesters, in the last few months... We hope members of the force can control their emotions in the field," he said.

In July, the Junior Police Officers Association started referring to protesters in its official statements as "cockroaches".

Cockroaches are known to be resilient in the face of adversity

When Superintendent Kong Wing-cheung from the Police Public Relations Branch was asked about this in August, he said the language was "not ideal", but added that all parties were "under a lot of stress".

That same month, Tsuen Wan district assistant commander Simon Southgate had to issue a reminder to his colleagues not to call protesters "cockroaches".

While the term "cockroach" is not an endearing one, maybe one could look at it as a sign of what's to come -- because regardless of what happens, cockroaches seem to survive just about anything.

Maybe protesters will be called yellow cockroaches?

Or would people just rather get the bug spray out?

Berlin's Power Centre

The Brandenburg Gate symbolizes peace and unity in Germany and Europe

After our museum hopping, we headed to the Brandenburg Gate, the iconic symbol of Germany as well as of unity and peace. On the subway, the carriage windows are covered in the Brandenburg Gate logo. To see it in person is impressive.

The 18th century neoclassical monument was built on the orders of Prussian King Frederick William II. It is built on the site of the former city gate, located on the western part of Berlin's city centre. When King Frederick William II commissioned the gate, it was meant to represent peace.

Designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans, the gate features 12 Doric columns that form five passageways. At the top of the gate is a quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses that were sculpted by Johann Gottfried Schadow.

A detail of the quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses

The design of the gate was inspired by Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.

When the Nazis ascended power, they appropriated the gate as a party symbol. During World War II the gate was damaged by bullets and nearby explosions. One of the horse's heads survived the war and is kept in a museum.

After Germany surrendered at the end of the war, both governments of West Berlin and East Berlin restored the gate as best they could. However, when the Berlin Wall was built dividing the city, that prevented access to the gate from 1961 until 1989, when the wall finally fell.

As a result of the wall being torn down, the gate again represented freedom and the desire to unite Berlin.

A short walking distance from the Brandenburg Gate is the Bundestag, or the German parliament. The building itself is called Reichstag. It's an impressive, large building that was enhanced with a glass dome designed by Sir Norman Foster that visitors can climb up to. However, you need to book tickets in advance so we couldn't get in. Something to keep in mind for next time...

The Reichstag, the building that housed the Bundestag

The building was opened in 1894, and it was mysteriously set on fire in 1933 -- probably by the Nazis -- who used the incident to suspend people's rights, arrest communists, and increase police action in the country.

By taking advantage of people's fears, Adolf Hitler was able to rise to power, as he portrayed himself as anti-communist.

The Reichstag was not fully repaired after the fire, and then it was further damaged by air raids. When the Cold War began, the building was basically left unused because the Berlin Wall was built right next to it, and the seat of government of West Germany moved to Bonn in 1949.

From 1961 to 1964, architect Paul Baumgarten reconstructed the building, stripping it back to its former glory.

When Germany was finally reunited in 1990, the ceremony was held at the Reichstag building, but it wasn't until two years later that Foster won the architectural contest to reconstruct the building, that was finally completed in 1999. The large dome gives visitors a 360 view of the city.

The German Chancellery that has some funny nicknames

Adjacent to the Reichstag is the German Chancellery where Chancellor Angela Merkel lives and works. Our taxi driver called it "Merkel House". The contemporary building that was opened in 2001 is the largest government headquarters building in the world at 12,000 square metres, which is 10 times the size of the White House.

Because of its massive size, the German Chancellery has some interesting nicknames. Because of its round shaped windows and cubic form, it's been called bundeswaschmaschine or "federal laundry machine" and elefantenklo or "elephant loo".

Review: The Eyes of Orson Welles

One of Orson Welles' sketches... of himself!

When there's a new documentary about someone famous, it better be interesting because previous docs have already tread on the same ground. And with Orson Welles, much is known about his acting career and personal life (three wives, three daughters). But do many people know that he liked to draw?

This is the premise of a new documentary called The Eyes of Orson Welles by filmmaker Mark Cousins who also writes and narrates this 115-minute love letter to the giant of cinema. Cousins somehow gets access to a box in a storage unit in New York, opens it, and wearing gloves, goes through it to find lots and lots of sketches.



The strokes are bold and deliberate, lots of play on dark and light, or quick drawings that capture craggy old faces. There are lots and lots of Christmas cards that he draws, paints, makes Santa Claus and the Christmas tree look more minimalist. These drawings are a vehicle in which to discover more about Welles' life.

A rough sketch of a knight on horseback

Cousins divides the documentary into five different parts, but basically he uses the sketches as a vehicle to put things into context, primarily showing how his sketches of landscapes of where he used to live, Ireland, Scotland, and Morocco, and shows them side by side with Welles' films that Cousins' believes to be the inspiration for his sets or particular scenes.

They are pretty convincing theories.

The filmmaker talks about how the camera always looks up at people to make them bigger or taller, and how the Nazis used totems of light and Welles echoed that idea in some of his films too, and how there was the "Orson swing" where people in scenes would swing around instead of just scoot over or walk a step away.

In Citizen Kane viewers look up or down at the characters

You can tell that Cousins has studied every minutiae about Welles' films and his life to be able to make such eagle-eyed observations. He visits practically every place that Welles lived or worked, going over the same landscapes he must have seen too, so the viewers can see what he saw.

There's wonderful scenes visiting Welles' third daughter who is still alive, Beatrice, who is 63 and lives in Arizona. She shows several paintings that her father did and talks about how her parents met -- her mother was an Italian heiress, actress and model Paola Mori.

Beatrice was recruited to act in her father's film, most famously in Chimes at Midnight, and later she became a model too. She now looks after her father's estate, and acted as consultant for this documentary, which is probably why Cousins got such great access to Welles' sketches.

Welles' youngest daughter Beatrice who lives in Arizona

In the beginning of the film, Cousins wonders aloud what Welles would think of the world now, over 30 years after his death (he died October 10, 1985). The narrator tells him we've had an African-American president and now some weirdo in the White House... Cousins argues we need Welles more than ever in this environment that has become so politically charged.

Welles would never back down from a political fight -- we learn that his mother was a community activist who took Welles to a church that did not discriminate, and Cousins believes this is where the young boy learned about social justice. Later on he abhorred what the Nazis did and even changed the ending of a film adapted from a book to have a more horrific ending to drive home the point.

In the documentary we see this picture so many times

Before the film I didn't know much about Orson Welles and afterwards felt like I learned a great deal not only about him as a person, but also as an actor and director, how he saw things so visually imbued with lots of meaning.

However The Eyes of Orson Welles seemed to drag on a bit too long towards the end, and Cousins keeps showing a picture of Welles probably in his late 20s or early 30s, lying on his stomach on a bed, his head propped up by his hand and looking wide-eyed into the camera. This got a bit too tedious -- he can't show another picture? And I also wondered what happened to the box? Did he bring it back to the storage locker?

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the documentary, particularly the using the sketches to delve deeply into Welles' life. He created these drawings and paintings when he was happy, mad, sad. But most of all he was a very creative person who not only thought about words on the page, but how he wanted  viewers to see his world.

Filmmaker Mark Cousins

The Eyes of Orson Welles
Written, directed, narrated by Mark Cousins
115 minutes

Monkey Business with Curious George

Well-researched and beautifully executed documentary mixed with animation

Another wonderful documentary that you can tell the filmmaker has poured their heart and soul is Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators that was released in June last year.

For the past 75 years, millions have loved reading Curious George books as children, but not many know about the couple who created the lovable simian character.

Margaret and Hans Rey created Curious George

Filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki gives a pretty comprehensive presentation of Hans and Margaret Rey not only through interviews with their literary executor, Lay Lee Ong, some academics, and even the Rey's neighbours in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, who back in the 1950s were young children that Hans would play with and entertain.

These interviews are interlaced with historical footage and -- even better -- animation of Hans and Margaret that are dropped into the black and white film to illustrate they were there.

They were both German Jews and Hans was originally dating Margaret's older sister when they met -- Margaret was only around nine years old. But they later kept in touch and while he went to Brazil to work with his entrepreneurial brother-in-law, Margaret later paid a visit to see him and decided they should get married and start an advertising firm.

Hans was always an artist, and even his studying medicine could not keep him from doodling. Margaret saw his talent and incorporated his cartoons with her copywriting and photographs for ads.

They left Paris by bicycle with only some precious items

They tied the knot in 1935 and moved to France, but this was just as Adolf Hitler was making his plans to take over the continent. By using cartoons of Hans and Margaret, Yamazaki is able to illustrate how the Reys were able to escape the Nazis in June 1940.

Hans built two bicycles out of spare parts and together they rode hundreds of kilometres south of Paris, to get to a town where they sold their bicycles to catch a train to get to the southwest coat to take a ship to Lisbon.

While they were in Paris, they had started writing a book about Fifi the monkey who later became George. They took this manuscript with them, and just before they escaped the French capital, they received an advance for the book that helped fund their journey.

The couple in their later years in the United States

They managed to get on a ship to the United States and thanks to one of Margaret's sisters who lived in Long Island received a letter from an editor who was familiar with the monkey book and gave them an advance for more Curious George books.

There are seven in total and each of them are a collaboration between the husband and wife.

It's so interesting they would spend their summers in Waterville Valley in the 1950s, at the time when anti-Semitism was very popular in the United States. The children neighbours, now in their 70s, remember Margaret as being scary, while Hans was very nice.

So while much is discussed about the Reys and how Curious George came about, there isn't much information about the Man in the Yellow Hat. Guess he will continue to remain a mystery.

Nevertheless the animation really makes Monkey Business an endearing film, inserting the couple into the story to "reenact" scenes in their lives and definitely adding a humorous touch.

Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators

Directed: Ema Ryan Yamazaki

1 hour and 21 minutes

Liu's Day has Come

Artist Ai Weiwei's Lego portrait of Liu Xiaobo

Anyone who has been reading the news of the deteriorating health of dissident Liu Xiaobo has been dreading this day, but it has come. He died today at the age of 61.

He is the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who won the prize in 1935 during the Nazi era.

This will be a dark stain on Chinese President Xi Jinping's legacy and the Chinese Communist Party that is desperately trying to win over the rest of the world through soft and hard power.

Letting Liu leave the country in his last days and hours would have been the humanitarian thing to do, and win Xi points on the world stage, but this is not how the president operates, as he has taken a harder line than any recent previous leaders.

China didn't want to be seen as giving in to Liu's last wishes of leaving the country in the hopes that his wife Liu Xia would have a better life.

Perhaps even more outrageous is that Liu's liver cancer diagnosis was announced at such a late stage that there was nothing any doctor or treatment could do. This appears to be a deliberate move so that no one could do anything.

At the same time, Liu's health condition had to be announced to avoid China being accused of killing him in prison, which would have raised issues of his treatment in incarceration.

While we are outraged at how the Chinese government treated Liu, where were all the world leaders speaking out about violating his human right to proper medical treatment? They are too scared to anger China with economies dependent on the country to stay afloat.

Liu can now rest in peace, but what of his wife? She will probably remain under some kind of house arrest, though she is the innocent bystander in all of this. Liu Xia is emotionally fragile and surely his death will make it even harder to keep going.

PEN America will be holding a vigil tonight in New York and we will probably see other groups hold similar events tonight and in the next day or so.

Liu was China's moral compass and he has died knowing he has done his part for his country.

Banksy's New York Show

One of the first graffiti pieces Banksy did in New York in October 2013

In October 2013, the British graffiti artist Banksy presented his artwork all over New York City. For the whole month, he produced a different piece in a different location, which he announced that morning on his website with a cheeky audio guide to go with it.

His fans, art collectors and those who happened to come across it, rushed to these places to photograph it -- or if they were too late -- to see it already painted over, graffiti-ed over by other artists, or even cut out of doors and walls as owners thought it was a free Banksy art piece.

His take on the US attack on innocent lives in Iraq

The hipster scavenger hunt was captured in a documentary called Banksy Does New York that was released in 2014 and I saw on the plane last night.

He is an elusive character -- no one knows what he looks like, and somehow manages to pull off very interesting pop culture social commentary pieces.

The documentary follows several main people, fans, journalists and art critics to discuss almost every piece Banksy did in New York, the meaning behind them, what happened to the pieces afterwards and what this says about people, art and celebrity.

Two fans in particular who are dog walkers, would jump into a car and everyday film themselves as they tried to find the latest Banksy piece. Sometimes they found it, or they got there after it was painted over, by Banksy himself? Or someone else? Or his graffiti, which defaced the wall or surface, was graffiti-ed by someone else defacing his piece. Quite ironic, but it also got people annoyed and angry that people just blatantly ruined what they felt was art. Or did Banksy care?

A Banksy sphinx sculpture an art dealer hopes to sell

Some art dealers were thrilled to see Banksy doing some interesting things, from witty stencil graffiti which he is well known for, as well as creative pieces, including a wall and car together with wild-looking horses in a reference to an attack on innocent Reuters reporters in Iraq, and you can hear the original recording of the US soldiers during the incident.

Another is a fun diaorama of a landscape scene complete with a waterfall and pond, another was a collaboration with a local graffiti artist and they hung their two canvases side by side from the bottom of a bridge like a gallery.

Towards the end he apparently bought an innocuous oil painting of an idyllic landscape from a thrift shop and painted a bench and a Nazi soldier sitting on it and "donated" it back to the shop, where they raised over US$600,000 to help families living with AIDS.

New Yorkers began having fun with his graffiti

But then there were greedy people who owned the building where Banksy left the graffiti and either put plexiglass over it to "protect" it, or even cut out the door or wall to keep it for themselves.

Wasn't it public art though? What designates it to be theirs?

Even worse was a rough brick sculpture of a sphinx that three guys just literally stole from a lot near where they worked. They sold it for an undisclosed sum to a European New York-based art dealer who thought he could sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most ironic was Banksy paying an old man to sell his stencil graffiti on canvas for US$60 each and only sold a few, and now they were worth over US$200,000 each.

How does one assign value to art, and is it only art if a famous name is attached to them?

An old man sold Banksy's pieces for US$60 each

It was just fascinating to see what he produced and how he was able to pull off such a large-scale project every day without being discovered. One reporter was able to get an accomplice to reveal that he had to sign several confidentiality agreements and that there is no way he could have done all this himself -- he must have had a team helping him to scout locations and execute all these pieces.

Which is why the reporter thinks Banksy knows what he is doing -- he is a businessman, and knows others are profiting from him, that his name has value, even though then Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated defacing public spaces was a definite no-no.

Banksy Does New York is a fun, comprehensive look at not only the graffiti pieces he made, but also the meanings behind them and how New Yorkers responded to them.

He must have found their reactions amusing.

Remembering Harry Wu

Harry Wu was a tireless critic of China after he became an American citizen

I read in the International New York Times yesterday that human rights activist Harry Wu had died last Tuesday. He was 79.

Wu had a very compelling story -- at the age of 23 in Shanghai he was accused of criticizing the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and being insufficiently supportive of Mao Zedong's regime.

He was forced into hard labour in farms, mines and prison camps for 42 years and was released three years after Mao died.

A picture of Wu paraded on TV in 1995 after he was arrested

In 1985 Wu moved to the United States and after becoming an American citizen in 1994, he began exposing the laogai or "reform through labour" system. He compared them to the Soviet gulag and Nazi concentration camps, claiming hard labour caused the deaths of many political prisoners.

A year later he returned to China undercover many times to expose prison conditions as well as the sale of organs from executed inmates. He was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison, but thanks to pressure by human rights advocates and then First Lady Hillary Clinton, Wu was released after 66 days.

Soon after he was released, I was in Vancouver trying to bide my time as my Hong Kong employer applied for my work visa. To keep myself occupied, I tried to pitch the odd story and one of them was an opportunity to interview Wu.

I called long distance to ask my colleague if someone would be interested in the story and I could hear him relay the message to a senior editor.

One of two books Wu wrote about China

That editor said something to the effect that Wu was not a big deal -- that even he had Wu's number in his wallet and could call him at anytime.

I just remember my heart sinking, because I had thought it would have been a good story, and it was shot down as a silly notion.

Was it because Wu was overexposed in the media? Did he make comments that people considered were outrageous and over the top?

And so reading his obituary, I remember wanting to do a story on Wu, but was denied the opportunity. It's one of the few times I regret not being able to talk to him.

Wu may have been what journalists call a "media whore", for doing whatever it took to get press attention, but no one can deny that he made the world more aware of human rights violations that happened then and are still continuing in China.

Hong Kong Video Plea goes Viral

Agnes Chow in a screen grab from the video posted on her Facebook page

A month ago, Agnes Chow Ting sent out a video plea on Facebook. Called "An urgent cry from Hong Kong" the video shows her reading out a letter in English, talking about the disappearance of the five booksellers, and how it was important to find out what happened to them.

That video went viral and was seen by over 1 million times and shared 13,000 times.
"I was quite surprised [when the video went viral]. It shows that people all over the world care about what is happening in Hong Kong -- they are shocked by it. I hope people will lean about the political situation and keep their eye on Hong Kong. I am really happy that everyone is showing their support," the Baptist University student and core member of Scholarism said.

"This is the first time that we are aware of Hong Kong people being taken to the mainland because of political feelings about Chinese President Xi Jinping."

Over a week ago Gui Minhai made a strange confession on state television, admitting to killing a young woman in a drunk driving accident in Zhejiang province in 2003, while Lee Po's wife was able to see her husband over a week ago in an undisclosed location on the mainland.

The other three associates have not been heard from since they disappeared.

Chow says more protests need to be organized to further pressure the Chinese government to reveal what has happened to the five people.

"I hope people will start to care more about the booksellers. This case shows we do not have the kind of freedoms we should," she said.

In her video, Chow talks about how Hong Kong people believed that with "one country, two systems", their rights and freedoms would be upheld.

"In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of mainland China. However, the circumstances have changed with the abduction which was suspected to be done by the police in China towards this bookseller who kept being low profile before."

As a result, in the video, Chow says she fears for her safety too.

"I hope everyone in the world who believes in universal values of freedom and human rights could stand up and speak for this incident to stop the political suppression," she says.

"Even I am afraid of my personal safety after this incident. I still believe we should continuously fight for freedom from fear because it is an important core value that we should uphold."

In the end Chow quotes from German pastor Martin Niemöller, who became an outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler and voiced his regret for not doing enough for the victims of Nazi rule.

First they came for the activists, and I did not speak out. Because I was not an activist.

Then they came for the journalists and I did not speak out. Because I was not a journalist.

Then they came for the bookseller, and I did not speak out. Because I was not a bookseller.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.