Come December Hong Kong will hold its District Council elections. Missing in the fray
will be Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy party. This situation has come to pass after
a change in the electoral law governing participation in the elections.
Lo Kin-hei,Chairperson of the Democratic Party, recently shared that he and other members ofthe Party could not secure enough nominations under the new laws on elections.
TheHong Kong authorities have thus laid down the line that they do not want the
participation of any individual or party that challenges the authority of the Communist
Party of China (CPC).
Under the new rules, only 20% of seats in the District Councils will be directly elected.
The rest will be filled by people appointed by the Government. Pertinently, vetting has
been made mandatory for all candidates. Finally, to be able to enter the race,
candidates have to secure endorsements from at least nine members of the local
committees, which are usually filed with pro-government figures. The bottom line is
that only “patriots” who are loyal to the CPC will be allowed to contest the election.
This is sharp contrast to the earlier times when close to 94% of the seats to the District
Council were elected. With the new changes to the electoral law that became effective
in July 2023, the proportion of elected seats in much lower than when the District
Councils were elected under British rule in 1982.
The District Councils came into prominence in 2019 when the pro-democracy lobby in
the region won a landslide victory after months of protest. The protests were against
the legal revisions proposed by the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong allowing criminal
suspects to be extradited to mainland China.
This led to protests by students, lawyersand teachers across Hong Kong, the echoes of which still resonate in the region. JohnLee, a former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, when introducing the revisions to theelectoral laws noted that when the pro-democracy councils were formed in 2019, theywere “platforms of protest and violence and Hong Kong independence”.
Soon after the return of Hong Kong to the Communist fold in 1997, the CPC began tointerfere in the administration of the region. This was despite their assurance to the
UK that they would maintain the standard civil liberties of the people for 50 years! After
the massive protests in 2019, the authorities imposed the draconian national security
law that undermined the very foundation of freedom and transparency in Hong Kong.
In 2021, China revamped the electoral laws governing Hong Kong’s Legislative
Council, to ensure that only those who could prove themselves to be loyal to the CPC
could stand for elections.
Consequently, many Hong Kong residents fled for the West. Between 2019 and 2022,
Hong Kong’s population declined from 7.5 million to 7.3 million of those who migrated
out nearly 124,000 moved to the UK, while many others have settled in Canada.
Prominent amongst those who moved out of Hong Kong were young opposition figures
who played a crucial role in the pro-democracy movement, including Agnes Chow,
Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Lester Shum.
Opposition activist Agnes Chow Ting pledged to never return home after fleeing to
Canada. Chow is among the young activists caught in the trap of the 2020 national
security law, alongside others, such as Edward Leung Tin-kei, who was then serving
time in prison. Thanks to the South China Morning Post (5 December 2023) it is
possible to trace the whereabouts of each of these pro-democracy activists. Each of
these activists fought hard to retain democracy in Hong Kong, but the Communist
Party, by a combination of legal change and force, ensured that communist rule
became more entrenched in the region than ever before.
Chow co-founded the political party ‘Demosisto’, with fellow activists Joshua Wong
Chi-fung and Nathan Law Kwun-chung. She left Hong Kong three months ago to
pursue a Master’s degree in Canada. Earlier in 2017, Chow was disqualified from
running in a Legislative Council by-election on the grounds that her party, which called
for self-determination, had rendered her ineligible under the rules to curb advocacy for
independence. She was detained in 2020 for allegedly plotting to collude with ‘foreign
forces’ by calling for sanctions on Hong Kong. In December 2020, she was sentenced
to ten months for inciting protesters to besiege the police headquarters during the 2910
demonstrations.
Fellow Demosisto co-founder Nathan Law came into the limelight in 2014 as a key
leader during the Occupy movement and today lives in the UK. He was granted asylum
in 2021. Law was elected as Hong Kong’s youngest lawmaker in 2016. Ahead of his
swearing-in, he had quoted Mahatma Gandhi, saying: “You can chain me, you can
torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.” In
August 2017, he was sentenced to eight months’ jail time for his role in the storming
of government headquarters at Tamar in 2014. In 2018, the Court of Final Appeal
overturned jail terms handed down to Law, Wong and fellow activist Alex Chow Yongkang.
Wong, 27, achieved international fame as a student activist, appearing on the cover
of Time magazine and becoming the subject of a documentary. He first became a
household name in 2012 when he co-founded pupil-led group Scholarism and led
protests. Wong was amongst those who spearheaded lobbying to get the Trump
administration, and US politicians in 2019, to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and
Democracy Act. Wong is currently in custody and is accused of violating the national
security law by attempting to subvert state power.
Leung, now 32, previously acted as a spokesman for localist group Hong Kong Indigenous and served as the face of thecity’s pro-independence movement. The activist was jailed for six years for rioting andassaulting an officer during the 2016 Mong Kok riot, which was sparked by scufflesbetween street hawkers and municipal staff on the first day of Lunar New Year and escalated into violent clashes between police and demonstrators. Leung was released early in January 2022 after serving four years behind bars.
The Hong Kong story of those who fought against the CPC rekindles the memories of
the pro-democracy movement. For Hong Kong that moment is gone and what remains
is a region tightly under the control of mainland China. While the people of Hong Kong
still have some privileges, like access to internet, the political landscape is no longer
has the democratic system that prevailed under British rule. The Communist regime
has ensured by law and by force that no leader or politician shall arise who can
challenge President Xi Jinping.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/30/hong-kong-pro-democracyleader-joshua-wong-arrested-says-demosisto
Source: https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20200630-china-approves-hong-kongnational-security-law-protests-democracy-secret-police-state