The continued existence of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong had given a flicker of hope that a path remained to improving the political situation in the former British colony. That faint flicker looks like it would soon be extinguished.
Established in 1994, a few years before the UK government’s official handover of Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, the Democratic Party is the oldest and largest extant pro-democracy party in the territory. At times accused of being cautious in its advocacy, the party followed a pragmatic approach to achieving reform, and was the only party in Hong Kong that negotiated directly with Beijing’s Hong Kong Liaison Office.
It was through this relationship that party members were informed by Chinese officials that Beijing had lost its patience with the party, and that they should prepare to disband or face serious consequences.
In truth, the writing has been on the wall for some time. While the final decision to disband has yet to be made, a party general meeting on Sunday concluded with 90 percent of members voting to move forward with the process.
Any vestigial effort to improve the rights situation in Hong Kong has to be organized from outside. Amnesty International on Tuesday announced that it had relaunched its Hong Kong branch “in exile,” after its two offices in the territory were closed in 2021 following the introduction of Hong Kong’s National Security Law the previous year. Registered in Switzerland, the office’s operations are to be orchestrated by Hong Kongers in Taiwan, Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
The system in Hong Kong has been so entirely subsumed by Beijing’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime as to make any reference to it as separate from China irrelevant. Democracy in Hong Kong is dead, and the CCP has killed it.
British lawmaker Wera Hobhouse on Thursday last week was denied entry into Hong Kong. Hobhouse said that she had been given no reason. A Hong Kong government spokesperson said only: “The person concerned knows best what he or she has done.”
The Hong Kong government gave the impression that there was no need to explain the denial, almost as if it was surprised the question even had to be asked. Perhaps it had a right to be, at which point the question becomes, why should anybody be surprised that the authorities act like this in the new Hong Kong?
Hobhouse should not have been surprised that she was turned away. She is a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). There is little love lost between the CCP and IPAC. Reports of the denial say that Hobhouse was the first British MP to have received that kind of treatment since the 1997 handover. However, it is not entirely without precedent.
In 2014, a British delegation seeking to visit Hong Kong to monitor adherence to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration was refused entry. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) at the time said “Britain has no sovereignty over Hong Kong ... and no right to oversight.” Actually, according to the agreement, it did.
Three years later, ministry spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) said the declaration is “a historical document that no longer has any realistic meaning.” That unilateral interpretation should not be surprising, either.
The British government might have been offended that a British MP was turned away from its former colony, but Hobhouse was not refused entry into Hong Kong, she was turned away from China. Did nobody listen to what Hua and Lu said? What has happened to Hong Kong is tragic, but nobody should be surprised.
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