03 Jun 21 | China, Hong Kong, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116835″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]For 30 years in a row after the 4 June bloodshed in Beijing, Hong Kong people had turned out en masse at Victoria Park, the city’s central park, to commemorate the victims of the killings at and around Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989.
The regular June scenes saw marked changes last year. The imminent enforcement of a national security law scheduled for 1 July 2020 and a government ban on assembly on grounds of the Covid-19 epidemic cast a long shadow over the annual vigil. Still, thousands of people came out, holding candlelights and vowing “not to forget 4 June”.
Citing social distancing rules again this year, the Police rejected the application for a march planned for 30 May and an assembly at the park on 4 June to mark the 32nd anniversary.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (Alliance), an umbrella body composed of pro-democracy groups which holds the vigil every year, has announced they will not hold any event at the park in the evening of 4 June.
More than 20 democrats, including leaders of the Alliance, who took part in last year’s candlelight vigil last year, were convicted of participating in unlawful assembly. They were given jail sentences of up to 14 months.
The remaining Alliance leaders will no doubt be arrested and face at least the same charge if they turn up at the park on 4 June. Worse, they may be charged with subversion under the national security law.
Alliance leaders advised people to commemorate the victims in a safe and peaceful manner.
Media reports quoted anonymous sources close to the government warning people not to wear black clothes – a regular form of portest – and not to hold up candles at and near Victoria Park. First, they may breach the social distancing rules. Mort importantly, they may be charged with unlawful assembly if they are deemed to have the same purpose in public places.
As this article goes to press, the city is laden with an air mixed with anger and fear, persistence and helplessness.
Following the harsh sentences of democrats convicted of unlawful assembly and the enactment of the national security law, fear has swept the city. Calls for a democratic China and an end of one-party dictatorship that resonated in earlier 4 June vigils could now be deemed as subversive.
Although the majority of people still believe they are on the right side of the history of the 4 June crackdown and must persist in holding up the candle of hope, they feel helpless in stopping the government crackdown on commemorating the anniversary.
Last Wednesday, the operators of the 4 June Museum run by the Alliance closed its doors, hours after officials from the Food and Environmental Hygiene department accused it of operating as a place of public entertainment without the required licences.
The museum reopened briefly on Sunday to mark the 4 June anniversary; it may never reopen again.
Founded at the heyday of the student-led movement in 1989, the Alliance’s days are seemingly numbered. Pro-Beijing political figures and media have put more pressure on the Government to ban the Alliance on grounds that its call for an end of one-party dictatorship in its manifesto is subversive.
Its disbandment is no longer a question of if, but when.
This is not so much because the Alliance has or will pose any real threat, nor embarrassment, to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. It can be argued that the opposite is true. That it was allowed to exist has provided a real-life case study that showed the world how the policy of “one country, two systems” worked.
Except for the much-smaller scale of commemorations in Taiwan, Hong Kong had been the only place in mainland China where people were allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.
Tolerance of the communist authorities towards 4 June commemoration, and indeed a free Hong Kong, has now run out.
With hindsight, the authorities feel they were wrong to have given too much freedom to Hong Kong people. As a result of that, many, in particular young people, have kept testing Beijing’s tolerance by crossing the political “red lines”, referring to politically sensitive issues such as independence and self-determination as well as challenging the system of government and their governance.
The protracted territory-wide protests sparked by a bill on extradition in 2019, followed by a landslide victory of the democrats in the district council elections in November that year, have shocked Beijing. They responded by imposing the national security law and overhauling the election system to make sure the city is run by Beijing-trusted patriots.
With democracy scuttled and freedom curtailed, the 4 June candlelights, described by Nancy Pelosi, US House Speaker, as “a beautiful sight to behold”, may now become history, testifying the end of “one country, two systems.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”85″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
01 Apr 21 | China, Hong Kong, Media Freedom, Opinion, Ruth's blog, Taiwan
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Photo: PublicDomainPictures
The awful actions of the Chinese government over the last month have dominated our news agenda. The collective actions of the government and their outliers have been designed to silence dissent, to intimidate and to bully.
They have repeatedly attacked core democratic principles both at home and abroad, undermining fair political participation. They’ve arrested democracy activists, changed the law to restrict electoral access to the Hong Kong Legislative Council to sanctioned ‘patriots’ otherwise known as the allies and friends of the Government of China.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has also sanctioned British parliamentarians and activists for daring to speak out about the acts of genocide, happening as I type, in Xinjiang province against the Uighur community. The CCP chose not to target members of the British Government nor key businesses with sanctions.
Instead, it sent a political message and targeted backbench Conservative MPs, two think-tanks and an academic, those who had been most vocal in exposing the actions of the CCP in both Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. This was a move intended to silence criticism not impose economic sanction, a clumsy and ineffectual effort to restrict free speech outside China’s borders.
This week, these aggressive actions by the CCP culminated with yet another attack on media freedom when the BBC’s lead China correspondent, John Sudworth, was forced to relocate with his family from Beijing to Taiwan after a campaign of state-sanctioned threats and intimidation. Sudworth and his wife, a fellow journalist for the Irish RTE, Yvonne Murray, were faced with no other option than to leave after months of personal attacks in Chinese state media and by Chinese government officials. They will both continue to report on events in China from Taiwan.
The harassment of international journalists in China (and now in Hong Kong) is becoming normalised, with dozens of journalists having to leave in recent months; threats of visas being withheld are now commonplace. This is simply unacceptable.
China seeks to be a loud voice on the global stage – they need to live up to their commitments under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They need to remember they are signatories to Article 19 and that media freedom and free expression are protected rights.
Index stands in solidarity with John and Yvonne.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
12 Mar 21 | China, Hong Kong, Opinion, Ruth's blog
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Yang Xiaoguang
It will not surprise you to know that I think words are important. Both in terms of what they tell you and what they don’t. When words come from a diplomat, a person who is trained to be civil and to not give too much away, from someone who is literally paid to give the official line, then their words can be even more insightful.
Which is why I think it is important to read the words of Yang Xiaoguang, chargé d’affaires of the Chinese embassy in the UK (right), from an interview he did yesterday morning on the BBC’s Today programme.
When questioned about the National Security Law in Hong Kong and the ‘patriots governing Hong Kong’ resolution, which was passed unanimously by the National People’s Congress on Thursday, he said:
Different definition about democracy.
In Hong Kong, we have seen too many political frictions.
The aim is to ensure that patriots have the industry power of Hong Kong so that it will be good for the long run of governance. For the benefit of the whole of the Chinese people.
This is an internal affair.
And when challenged on the treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang he said:
British Bias Corporation.
Too much fake news.
Genocide doesn’t exist in Xinjiang.
We are bringing economic development and stability in Xinjiang.
Taken at face value this completely counterfactual narrative could be plausible. Until facts get in the way.
You cannot dismiss images of Uighur men in lines at a train station, waiting to go to the ‘re-education’ camps as fake news. You cannot claim that China has a different definition of democracy when they signed up to the original plans for one country, two systems. And you cannot claim that you are acting for the benefit of the people of Hong Kong and China when you implement a new National Security Law and arrest over 100 leading democracy campaigners, including 47 charged with subversion last week for daring to hold election primaries in Hong Kong.
There is a genocide happening today in Xinjiang province as I type. The few witnesses who have managed to escape have told consistent stories. The images of the queues and of the camps have been verified. The US and Canada recognise these actions as acts of genocide.
In Hong Kong, we’ve looked on in horror as the CCP have moved in, asserting their authority with the National Security Law. We’ve watched as social media accounts have disappeared, as activists have been arrested, as journalists have been silenced and as the BBC World Service was banned.
The CCP seemingly no longer cares what the world thinks. It is has made a strategic calculation that it’s economic might protects it from global condemnation. That a propaganda campaign against public broadcasters like the BBC will be successful. That no one is brave enough to challenge them.
But brave the world must be. People are dying. People are being arrested. People are disappearing. On our watch.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
