Glutter: Awaiting A Democratic Hong Kong · Global Voices
Andrea Leung

For the next few weeks, we’ll be offering profiles of bloggers nominated for the Reporters Sans Frontières weblog awards. This profile is part of the series. Please visit the RSF voting page and vote for your favorite blogs. – Your friendly editors.
Glutter is arguably the most vocal voice from Hong Kong in the English language blogosphere.
A native of Hong Kong, Yan Sham-Shackleton, the blogger behind Glutter, started blogging the day after she took part in a half a million people march against a pending legislation which, if enacted, would threaten free speech in Hong Kong.
The government eventually back down on the law. But Sham-Shackleton had continued to write relentlessly on free speech issue and tracking the ups and downs of democractic development in Hong Kong since then.  At times, her blog would also feature news on human rights violations in China.
“Because I am afraid that if we don't talk about it now, if we don't fight for and protect our freedom of press and freedom of speech, we will not have it anymore, and we can't protest every day nor is Hong Kong a democracy, so we have to work towards this goal in as many channels possible,” she wrote recently when she reflected on why she blogs.
Her blog is also a personal record in history where she hopes her writing will “turn into a historical record of the Hong Kong Story.”
But Glutter is more than an aspiration for free speech, democracy and the rule of law in Hong Kong.
It is also about showing the world graphic design, documentary-making, art, music, travel and women issues from a Hong Kong perspective.
Lately Glutter has been featuring musicians, t-shirt designs and musings on her life in a new apartment.
“Blogging is internet culture and the internet culture is a global culture,” she said recently in a local television news program in Hong Kong.
“You can have conversations with people in all over the world.”
As for her thoughts about being a freedom blog nominee herself, she wrote:“I am not here to “beat,” or “Compete,” with the 59 blogs. There is no real “Competition,” between us because none of us are working against each other. In fact we’re all working towards the same thing together. We are a team. All of us in our own way are trying to “Defend the Right of Free Expression,” through the blogging medium.”