Blind. Hong Kong dissident. Refugee. And as of Monday, she’s a Toronto lawyer

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The legislation sparked historic protests in 2019 that brought as many as a million people into the streets. The demonstrations, generally peaceful though occasionally more unruly, led to violent clashes with the police and finally a crackdown that would erase most of Hong Kong’s political freedoms.

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Despite her blindness, Luk put herself in the midst of the maelstrom, offering on-the-spot legal advice to other demonstrators and passing on information about police tactics she gleaned with her acute hearing.

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“I told myself, if some young people sacrifice their future for Hong Kong, why could I not do this?” she says.  “So I was not afraid of being arrested or being injured … or even dying or having my licence removed. That was not my first concern.”

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Her commitment to the cause meant being struck by police, enduring repeated searches at her home and being arrested, without charges, at a demonstration outside a police station. She says she sometimes stood in the street at the front of crowds of protesters, arguing with the police to ensure demonstrators had a chance to get away if necessary.

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She once broke her arm when stampeding police barrelled into her.

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Yet through it all, Luk says she had a unique power that made her actions possible.

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“I was not afraid because I could not see,” she said. “If you see the police, they are running toward you, your direct reaction is to leave. But I could not see.”

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Luk became a well-known figure in the movement, a blind woman seemingly fearless in the face of aggressive police tactics, said Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China.

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“She stood out,” said Kwan. “Despite all the oppression and suppression by the police, she was willing to stand up front and be counted.”

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In the end, Chinese-backed forces prevailed. In the protests’ wake, a Beijing-endorsed National Security Law barred most forms of dissent, independent journalists and democracy-touting politicians were jailed, and even Hong Kongers living in exile in Canada and elsewhere were targeted with charges and bounties for criticizing Beijing.

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Luk says she realized she had no future as a human-rights lawyer and feared bringing more trouble to her parents, so decided to leave, choosing Canada because she felt it would be more accepting of a disabled person than other safe havens. The association helped Luk when she arrived in Toronto in 2021, one supporter providing her with 18 months of free rent in a Toronto apartment, others eagerly helping with living expenses and immigration legal costs, said Kwan.

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The donors included former Conservative Senator Con DiNino, who according to Kwan called Luk the most courageous person he’d ever known.

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She managed to get into the U of T Masters program in 2024 and eventually sat for the bar-admission exams. It was grueling, Luk says.

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The exams were lengthy and to complete them she had to have her computer convert the text to speech, to the point where she began dreaming of the electronic voice. The computer can also convert text to braille, but that’s a much more time-consuming process.

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A particular challenge were exam questions that required looking at an image, such as a land-titles document.

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“I had to ask A.I. … ‘Using a blind person’s perspective, describe this picture, this figure, to me and let me know what it’s showing.”

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Luk is now working part-time at a law firm in Markham, north of Toronto. But even as her career restarts in a new country, she wants the world to remember what she and thousands of others fought for in Hong Kong seven years ago.

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“We believe that after several years, if we do not do anything, then people will forget what happened in 2019,” just like 1989’s Tiananmen massacre, she said. “We have no choice but to do something.”

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