There was a great turnout for the first big march against the extradition bill on June 9 — about one million people, the city’s largest demonstration until then — but it also felt like something of a last gasp. That night, some younger protesters weren’t done and didn’t want to go home. They went to the Legislative Council building with no plan and hardly any equipment. They knew only that they couldn’t let the bill be passed — or even discussed, as planned, on June 12 . If it became law, Hong Kong would never be the same.

It was the Hong Kong police that lapsed into violence on June 12, beating protesters and journalists, and firing off 150 rounds of tear gas against a crowd of peaceful demonstrators. The authorities have since said they were considering just five people on riot-related charges . Officers also lost control emotionally, throwing curses and obscenities at protesters and journalists. (Now there are T-shirts with the slurs .) A few days later, two million Hong Kongers marched again, once more against the extradition bill — which the government had suspended but not fully withdrawn — but this time also against police brutality.

The protesters’ most powerful weapon is the police’s own violence. Or to put the point more bleakly: If the police hadn’t been violent on June 12, would the bill have been suspended?

For years, only peaceful protests have seemed acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. But that’s because until recently they haven’t had to pay the full price f or their opinions about politics in Beijing.

During British colonial times, many Hong Kong people identified with mainland China, the motherland, and were deeply interested in developments there. But colonialism also acted as a shield. The British authorities quashed Communist-led riots in 1967. And Hong Kongers could support the student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 without risking any reprisals. They were patriotic from a safe distance.

But after the British handed formal control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, and as political and economic pressure from China intensified, more and more people in the city have identified as Hong Kongers rather than a s Chinese, Chinese living in Hong Kong or Hong Kong-Chinese . They have also increasingly borne the brunt of the Chinese government’s growing authoritarianism.

Hong Kongers are finally beginning to emancipate themselves from their old views . But the process is still at an early stage.