Last week, on a peaceful evening, I was startled by a distressing notification: The national-security police in Hong Kong had apprehended my parents for interrogation.

Hours later, they were released — only to be met by a crowd of journalists, summoned by the authorities to photograph and humiliate them.

I sat thousands of miles away, feeling every mile like a weight on my chest.

I felt powerless to shield them — not from the abrupt arrival at our door, not from the surveillance cameras, not from the enforcement officials who have ravaged our household and forced me to become a hunted criminal for standing up for the liberty we once enjoyed.

This marked the second occasion that my mother had been detained for questioning ever since the Hong Kong government issued a reward for my capture due to my activism abroad. Any individual who surrenders me to the authorities stands to receive a bounty of one million Hong Kong dollars.

My face — along with those of 18 other Hongkongers abroad — is plastered across news bulletins around Hong Kong.

And now my family — whom I’ve had to avoid since I left Hong Kong — was made to pay the price because I refuse to be silenced.

I was born in 1999, two years after the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong over to China under the promise of “one country, two systems.” I grew up with the freedoms that were once guaranteed to my people.

When I was 7, I joined my first public assembly in exercising these rights, and by 2012, as the erosion of our liberties became more urgent, I began actively participating in the social movement to defend them.

I didn’t know then it would one day mean exile. I didn’t know I’d watch my homeland disappear behind layers of silence — just as Beijing has erased pro-democracy voices in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

In 2021, I became the first Hong Kong activist to secure political asylum in the United States, which has welcomed me and my calls for freedom in my homeland.

I still remember the moment I received the news: A quiet relief washed over me, followed immediately by guilt and sorrow, knowing I might not ever go home again.

While many of my friends face imprisonment and surveillance back home, I found safety — but not peace.

The Chinese government’s repression extends beyond borders into every community and aspect of our lives.

Many advocates in exile have experienced threats and forms of harassment, including being followed on the streets — as I have been — and learning of letters sent to their neighbors encouraging their abduction.

Now the Hong Kong authorities — under the control of the Chinese Communist Party — have targeted my family. Through transnational repression and a sweeping destruction of civil liberties at home, the Chinese government is determined to instill fear in our movement to silence and divide us.

Watching my family get caught in the crossfire of my convictions is terrifying. The CCP uses them as a tool to pressure me.

My heart aches. I feel guilty. And even though I am portrayed as “fearless,” I feel fear in every action and word, for the risk I might pose to those around me.

Even now, as I write these words, I worry they could invite retaliation. But moments like this remind me that I am human — that I still have empathy. I can embrace these feelings, master them and transform them into strength.

In the face of fear, I choose not to compromise.

I refuse to let authoritarians take away my power to honor my parents, to share my story and to reclaim the pieces of life that define who I am.

I know I am not alone. Many of us are displaced, exiled, grieving and enduring quietly.

Over the years, our fight for democracy has become a fight for every person in Hong Kong who has been silenced, every student who’s lost his or her future and every family torn apart for standing against authoritarianism.

By carrying their stories with me, I hope to encourage them to speak truth to power and to reclaim their own stories.

Because in moments like this, every act of resistance — even a simple choice to keep going and hold on when it would be easier to let go — becomes a candle in the darkness.

Our movement will continue to be driven by courage and determination that will turn into power and collective faith, even in the darkest moments, that we will rise again — with love for the city we once belonged to.

Frances Hui, based in Washington, DC, continues her advocacy with the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation as the policy and advocacy coordinator and through her organization, We The Hongkongers, on cultural strengthening and community building with Hongkongers abroad.